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Author : Carroll Quigley, where not otherwise cited
Editor in Chief: Adriano Lucchese
Transcription: Leo Hercouet

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 2

Carroll Quigley: An Introduction 4

LIFE 16

Life 17

The Improbable Dr. Quigley 20

“Quigley... Making Birchers Bark” 25

The Professor Who Knew Too Much 29

Quigley: Another Side Of A Reflective Man 40

The Evolution Of Civilizations 44

The Evolution Of Civilizations: A Review 51

Carroll Quigley: Some Aspects Of His Last Twelve Years 55
Recent Off-Campus Activities Of Professor Carroll Quigley 61
Carroll Quigley Endowed Chair Brochure 65

LECTURES 70

The Holistic, Morphological, & Cognitive Qualities Of
Carroll Quigley’s Historiography 71

Selected Bibliography 94

References 95

Comparative National Cultures 98

Introduction 98

Comparative National Cultures 99

Parti 102

Part II 118

General Discussion 127

I • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

Changing Cognitive Systems As A Unifying Technique
In American Studies 134

Round Table Review: The Naked Capitalist 141

The Naked Capitalist 142

The Cult Of Conspiracy 144

Quigley’s Response 158

Skousen’s Reply 160

Midgley’s Rejoinder 166

Dissent: Do We Need It? 170

The Mythology Of American Democracy 192

That Anglo-Saxon Heritage 195

The Constitution And The Powers 1 96

The Stages Of Political Growth 199

Threats To Democracy 203

Remedies 207

Discussion 208

Public Authority And The State
In The Western Tradition:

A Thousand Years Of Growth, A.d. 976-1976 215

The Oscar Iden Lectures 215

Part I: “The State Of Communities”, A.D. 976-1576 216

Part II: “The State Of Estates”, A.D. 1 576-1776 235

Part ill: “The State Of Individuals”, A.D. 1 776-1976 259

COLLECTED WRITINGS 286

Dr. Quigley Explains How Nazi Germany
Seized A Stronger Czechoslovakia Faculty Corner 287

Politics 294

Father Walsh As I Knew Him 297

Constantine Mcguire: Man Of Mystery 311

Better Training For Foreign Service Officers 323

Quigley Probes Possibilities For Foreign Service
Curriculum Reform 324

Wartime Efforts 326

Revised Curriculum 327

Crucial Problems 330

Is Georgetown University Committing “Suicide”? 332

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER- II

Conant-Dodds Influence 335

The Christian West 337

Catholic Scholarship 339

A Difference Of Goals 342

Trahison Des Clercs 343

Obsolete Academic Disciplines 346

Today’s Problems 347

On The Borders 347

Self-Education 349

Needed: A Revolution In Thinking 351

The Partisan Side Of Quigley 360

Mexican National Character And Circum-Mediterranean
Personality Structure 363

References Cited 368

THE '74 INTERVIEW 372

1974 Interview With Rudy Maxa Of The Washington Post 373

PROFESSOR QUIGLEY'S QUOTES 414

Quotes From Quigley’s Work 415

The Evolution Of Civilizations (1961)

(Second Edition 1979) 415

Tragedy And Hope:

A History Of The World In Our Time (1966) 421

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3:

“The State Of Individuals” (1976) 421

PHOTO GALLERY 430

Boston Latin School, 1929 431

Harvard, 1933 432

Year 1943 433

Sfs Yearbook, 1948 434

Year 1950 435

Year 1950 436

Year 1951 437

III • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

Year 1951

438

Year 1956

439

Year 1956

440

Year 1961

442

Carroll Quigley & Wife Lillian, History , 1962

444

Year 1963

445

Year 1963

446

Year 1966

447

Year 1966

450

Year 1967

452

Year 1969

454

Year 1970

455

Year 1970

457

Year 1971

460

Year 1973

462

Year 1973

463

Year 1976

465

Year 1976

466

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DISCOVERYPUBLISHER.IV

INTRODUCTION

CARROLL QUIGLEY:
AN INTRODUCTION

C arroll Quigley was born in Boston and attended Harvard
University, where he studied history and earned B.A.,
M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. He taught at Princeton
University, at Harvard, and then at the School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown University from 1941 to 1976. After teaching
at Princeton and Harvard, Quigley came to Georgetown University in
1941 and became an on-line resource for Washington. He lectured at
the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the Brookings Institution,
the Stare Department’s Foreign Service Institute and consulted with
the Smithsonian and the Senate Select Committee on Aeronautical
and Space Sciences.

In addition to his academic work, Quigley served as a consultant
to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, the Smithsonian
Institution, and the House Select Committee on Astronautics and
Space Exploration in the 1950s. He was also a book reviewer for The
Washington Star, and a contributor and editorial board member of
Current History. Quigley said of himself that he was a conservative
defending the liberal tradition of the West. He was an early and

INTRODUCTION

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -4

fierce critic of the Vietnam War, and he opposed the activities of the
military-industrial complex.

To those duties and to his teachings, he brought his holist philosophy:
the belief that knowledge cannot be divided into parts, that the
world can be viewed only as an interlocking, complex system. This
philosophy complemented his life: he had reveled in the traditions and
contrasts of his neighborhood, eschewed fame in favor of keeping
his emotional and social development on track, and applied himself
to science and economics as well as history. His passion to consider
the “big picture” never cooled.

Quigley had no small regret that some of the best minds of his
generation insisted on treating the world in a 19 th Century fashion
by tinkering with its problems as a mechanic looks at an engine:
spreading the separate parts on the floor and considering each one
to find the malfunction. “This reductionist way of thinking,” Quigley
maintained, “had gotten Western civilization into all kinds of trouble.”

In an age characterized by violence, extraordinary personal
alienation, and the disintegration of family, church, and community,
Quigley chose a life dedicated to rationality. He wanted an explanation
that in its very categorization would give meaning to a history which
was a record of constant change. Therefore the analysis had to
include but not be limited to categories of subject areas of human
activity — military, political, economic, social, religious, and intellectual. It had
to describe change in categories expressed sequentially in time —
mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, universal empire, decay, and invasion. It
was a most ambitious effort to make history rationally understandable.

On such views, in 1 961 Quigley published the book The Evolution of
Civilizations. It was derived from a course he taught on world history
at Georgetown University. One of Quigley’s closest friends was Harry

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CARROLL QUIGLEY

J. Hogan. In the foreword to The Evolution of Civilizations he wrote:

The Evolution of Civilizations expresses two dimensions of its author,
Quigley, like for most extraordinary historian, philosopher, and teacher.

In the first place, its scope is wide-ranging, covering the whole of man’s
activities throughout time. Second, it is analytic, not merely descriptive. It
attempts a categorization of man’s activities in sequential fashion so as to
provide a causal explanation of the stages of civilization.

Quigley coupled enormous capacity for work with a peculiarly “scientific”
approach.

He believed that it should be possible to examine the data and draw
conclusions. As a boy at the Boston Latin School, his academic interests
were mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Yet during his senior year he
was also associate editor of the Register, the oldest high school paper
in the country. His articles were singled out for national awards by a
national committee headed by George Gallup.

In 1966, Macmillan Company published Tragedy and Hope, a work
of exceptional scholarship depicting the history of the world between
1895 and 1965 as seen through the eyes of Quigley. Tragedy and
Hope was a commanding work, 20 years in the writing, that added
to Quigley’s considerable national reputation as a historian.

Tragedy and Hope reflected Quigley’s feeling that “Western
civilization is going down the drain.” That was the tragedy. When
the book came out in 1 966, Quigley honestly thought the whole show
could he salvaged; that was his hope.

During his research, Quigley had noticed that many prominent
Englishmen and outstanding British scholars were members of an
honorary society:

[...] The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim,
nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private

INTRODUCTION

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -6

hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the
economy of the world as a whole, this system was to be controlled in
a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert
by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and
conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International
Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and
controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private
corporations....

It must not be felt that these heads of the world’s chief central banks
were themselves substantive powers in world finance. They were not.
Rather, they were the technicians and agents of the dominant investment
bankers of their own countries, who had raised them up and were
perfectly capable of throwing them down. The substantive financial
powers of the world were in the hands of these investment bankers (also
called ‘international’ or ‘merchant’ bankers) who remained largely behind
the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a
system of international cooperation and national dominance which was
more private, more powerful, and more secret than that of their agents
in the central banks; this dominance of investment bankers was based
on their control over the flows of credit and investment funds in their own
countries and throughout the world. They could dominate the financial
and industrial systems of their own countries by their influence over
the flow of current funds through bank loans, the discount rate, and the
re-discounting of commercial debts; they could dominate governments
by their own control over current government loans and the play of the
international exchanges. Almost all of this power was exercised by the
personal influence and prestige of men who had demonstrated their
ability in the past to bring off successful financial coups, to keep their
word, to remain cool in a crisis, and to share their winning opportunities
with their associates.

At the time, Quigley had no way of knowing he had just written
his own ticket to a curious kind of fame. He was about to become a

7 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

reluctant hero to Americans who believe the world is neatly controlled
by a clique of international bankers and their cronies. Quigley learned
of the country’s great appetite for believing a grand conspiracy causes
everything from big wars to bad weather.

Tragedy and Hope is not all juicy conspiratorial material. Most of it is
straight diplomatic, political, and economic history. All of it is brilliant.
His insights on such otherwise ignored (and crucially important) topics
as Japanese military history and its relation to family dynasties is
fascinating. But it did not gain its notoriety or its sales because of
these non-conspiratorial insights.

Quigley never claimed he was a conspiracy theorist; on the contrary:

You can’t believe what people think. Some believe it is all a Jewish
conspiracy, that is part of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which we
now know were perpetuated by the Czarist Russian police force in 1904.
And that this conspiracy is the same thing as the Illuminati, a secret
society founded in 1776 in Bavaria. And that the Illuminati are a branch
of the Masons. There are some people who say the Society of Cincinnati,
of which George Washington was a member during the American
Revolution, was a branch of the Illuminati and that’s why the Masons
built their monument in Alexandria to George Washington, since he was
a Mason and head of the Illuminati before he helped start the Society of
Cincinnati.

I generally think that any conspiracy theory of history is nonsense for
the simple reason that most conspiracies that we know about seem to
me to be conspiracies of losers, people who have been defeated on the
historical platforms of public happenings. Now, there is not the slightest
doubt that the international bankers have tried to make banking into a
mystery. But we are dealing with two different things. I don’t think that
is a conspiracy; because something is a secret does not mean it is a
conspiracy.

INTRODUCTION

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -8

In essence, the message of Tragedy and Hope is that the last century
was a tragedy that could have been avoided. Quigley believed that
the tragedy would not have happened if we had given diligent heed
of warnings. In other words, unless we carefully study his book and
learn the untold history of the twentieth century and avoid allowing
these same people, their heirs and associates — the rulers of various
financial, corporate and governmental systems around the world —
to ruin the twenty-first century, his work and the work of countless
others will have been in vain.

Tragedy and Hope received mixed, though generally favorable,
reviews. Opined the Library Journal : “Mr. Quigley .. . has written a very
remarkable book: very long, very detailed, very critical, very daring
and very good... His coverage of the world is amazingly encyclopedic
and well-balanced. ” Saturday Review was less flattering: “For those
who approve of this way of writing history, his rambling volume may
have a certain excellence.” The New York Times: “The book provides
a business-like narrative in which an incredible amount of information
is compressed — and in some cases presented — with drama and
distinction.”

After it sold 8,800 copies, and for reasons not clear to Quigley (but
he did not attribute it to any conspiracy), Macmillan stopped publishing
Tragedy and Hope and subsequently destroyed the plates:

The original edition published by Macmillan in 1966 sold about 8,800
copies and sales were picking up in 1968 when they “ran out of stock,”
as they told me. But in 1974, when I went after them with a lawyer, they
told me that they had destroyed the plates in 1968. They lied to me for
six years, telling me that they would reprint when they got 2,000 orders,
which could never happen because they told anyone who asked that it
was out of print and would not be reprinted. They denied this until I sent
them Xerox copies of such replies to libraries, at which they told me

9 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

it was a clerk’s error. In other words they lied to me but prevented me
from regaining the publication rights by doing so (on out-of-print, rights
revert to holder of copyright, but on out-of-stock, they do not.) Powerful
influences in this country want me, or at least my work, suppressed.

[...] Macmillan never got in touch with me offering the plates. I learned
in March of this year [1971] that they destroyed the plates, of Tragedy
and Hope. I learned in the summer, 1971, because my wife got mad
and called Macmillan on the phone, every week, while I was in England,
and finally got from them a letter in which they said the plates had been
destroyed. They said ‘inadvertently destroyed.’

That, there’s something funny. They lied and lied and lied and lied to
me. On everything. And I have letters to prove that.

Tragedy and Hope was never republished.

In the last 12 years of his life, from 1965 to 1977, Quigley taught,
observed the American scene, and reflected on his basic values
in life. He was simultaneously pessimistic and radically optimistic.
Teaching was the core of Quigley’s professional life and neither his
craving to write nor his discouragement with student reaction of the
early seventies diminished his commitment to the classroom:

For years I have told my students that I have been trying to train
executives rather than clerks. The distinction between the two is
parallel to the distinction previously made between understanding and
knowledge. It is a mighty low executive who cannot hire several people
with command of more knowledge than he has himself. And he can
always buy reference works or electronic devices with better memories
for facts than any subordinate. The chief quality of an executive is that
he has understanding. He should be able to make decisions that make
it possible to utilize the knowledge of other persons. Such executive
capacity can be taught, but it cannot be taught by an educational
program that emphasizes knowledge and only knowledge. Knowledge

INTRODUCTION

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER- 10

must be assumed as given, and if it is not sufficient the candidate
must be eliminated. But the vital thing is understanding. This requires
possession of techniques that, fortunately, can be taught.

[...] I am sure that you will enjoy teaching increasingly, as I do. It is the
one way we can do a little good in the world. The task is so important, the
challenge so great, and the possibilities for improvement and for variation
as infinite that it is the most demanding and most difficult of human
activities. Even a virtuoso violinist can be made to order easier than a
good teacher.

[...] It will be obvious to you that I have enjoyed my work, although at the
end of my career I have no conviction that I did any good. Fortunately,

I had a marvelous father and a marvelous mother, and we were taught
you don’t have to win, but you have to give it all you’ve got. Then it won’t
matter.

I told the editor that would be difficult, but I would try. I wrote it and they
refused to publish it because it was not optimistic enough...

In 1976, Quigley wrote congratulating Carmen Brissette-Grayson’s
husband for his decision to give up any idea of leaving state politics
for the federal arena. Quigley concluded:

It is futile, because it is all so corrupt and the honest ones are so
incompetent. I should not say this, as students said it to me for years and
I argued with them.

It was more than the institutionalization of the American political
system which concerned him:

1 1 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

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We are living in a very dangerous age in which insatiably greedy men
are prepared to sacrifice anybody’s health and tranquility to satisfy their
own insatiable greed for money and power.

He feared that these values had virtually destroyed the roots of the
Western outlook and had made the creation of a satisfying life in
contemporary America a hazardous undertaking:

I am aghast at what selfishness, and the drive for power have done to
our society... I worry as I find the world so increasingly horrible that I do
not see how anything as wonderful as your life can escape.

Less than six months before Quigley passed away, he advised:

The best thing you can do is to keep some enclaves of satisfying
decent life.

Much of the joy of teaching left Quigley in his last years. He
complained bitterly that his 1970s college students were woefully
under-educated and ill-prepared for college level work and that too
many of them had their minds elsewhere, fixated more on bringing
about a social revolution than on achieving an education.

Helen Veit, the person closest to Quigley during the last ten years
of his life, wrote in reply to a student who had so strongly opposed
Quigley’s “tough grading standards”:

[...] Impatient he may have been; arrogant he was not. His emphatic
manner derived from his experience of teaching large classes and the
need for catching and retaining their attention. But he never believed
that he had “answers”; what he taught was methods of approaching
problems. He often stressed how little we know about the important
things of life, especially human relationships. What he sought above all

was to help people to become mature, by realizing their potentials and
understanding that material things, however necessary, should never
be ends themselves, while what is important is seeking the truth in
cooperation with others, with the knowledge that one will never find it.

Nor was he ever cynical, much as he deplored inefficiency and
ignorance. His beliefs and principles were of the highest order; his
greatest joy came from finding people who could meet his standards, and
from whom he could learn.

Quigley’s impatience came from his deep awareness that a man who
wants to do so much can never have enough time. He was a man in a
hurry — events have proved him right.

Yet pessimism about American society did not weaken a radical
optimism rooted in his essential values: nature, people, and God:

The need for others is present on all levels; the physical, emotional,
and intellectual. Indeed, every relationship has in it all three aspects. The
desire to help others experience these things and to grow as a result of
such experiences is called love. Such love is the real motivating force
of the universe and is, in its ultimate nature, a manifestation of the love
of God. Because while God is pure Reason and man’s ultimate goal is
Reason, it cannot be reached directly and must always be approached
step by step, not alone but in companionship with others, and thus
through love. Thus love of others, ultimately love of God, are the steps by
which man develops reason and slowly approaches pure Reason.

Adriano Lucchese
Discovery Publisher
August 1, 2015

1 3 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

LIFE

• Some things are important, but most things are only necessary.

• Necessary things are only important when you do not have them
and are generally ignored when they are amply supplied. These
include oxygen, food, drink, shelter, and all physical needs.

• Important things are important all the time whether you have them
or not, whether you realize it or not.

• People who regard necessary things as important are unhappy
and frustrated even when they get them and even if they are quite
unaware that the important things exist.

• Important things are those which can be made ends in
themselves, worth seeking and worth having. Necessary
things, since they are not important for their own sakes, should
never made ends in themselves, but must be permitted only
to be means to important ends. Thus, material wealth, power,
popularity, and prestige should never be ends but only means to
ends, because however necessary they may be they are never
important.

• THE ONLY THING WHICH IS IMPORTANT IS TRUTH — that is
the total structure of reality. The meaning of anything arises from
its relationship to that total structure. The reason that material
things are not important is because of the subordinate position
they hold in that total structure.

• From this point of view, important things may exist on any level of
reality. For example, physical health, exercise, and coordination

1 7 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

are important on the physical level, but are not as important as
things on higher levels, even though they can be made ends in
themselves.

• On the higher levels are such things as feelings and intellectual
awareness.

• The important things are those concerned with the realization of
the potentialities of an individual because such realization brings
the individual in closer contact with the total structure of reality —
that is, with TRUTH.

• Each individual is so inadequate that there are only a few things
he can do to help realize his potentialities. Among these few are
will — the desire to do this and the determination to do it.

• Because of the inadequacy of the individual — that is, his basic
need for other persons and his inability to direct his efforts unless
he has recognition of his relationships with the rest of reality, the
individual can achieve nothing by seeking to obtain things for
himself, because this makes him the center of the universe, which
he is not. Thus, selfishness achieves nothing.

• Thus the chief immediate aim in life of each individual must be
to help others realize their potentialities. This is what Kant meant
when he said that others must never be treated as means to be
used, but always as ends in themselves. It is basic in human
experience that those things a person seeks for himself directly
are never obtained. They are only obtained indirectly as a by-
product of an effort to obtain them for others. Thus the man who
seeks only wealth for himself never feels rich, as the man who
seeks power never feels secure, and the man who seeks pleasure
never feels satisfied. But the man who seeks important things for
others often feels rich, secure, and satisfied.

LIFE

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER- 18

The need for others is present on all levels, the physical,
emotional, and intellectual. Indeed, every relationship has in it
all three aspects. The desire to help others experience these
things and to grow as a result of such experiences is called love.
Such love is the real motivating force of the universe and is, in its
ultimate nature, a manifestation of the love of God. Because while
God is pure Reason and man’s ultimate goal is Reason, it can not
be reached directly and must always be approached step by step,
not alone but in companionship with others, and thus through
love. Thus love of others, ultimately love of God, are the steps by
which man develops reason and slowly approaches pure Reason.

Carroll Quigley, August 1967

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CARROLL QUIGLEY

THE IMPROBABLE DR. QUIGLEY

Austin hyde

COURIER, Vol. X, No. 2, October 1961, pp. 12-13

A close friend of Dr. Carroll Quigley defines the fact in the legend
about one of the most outstanding of the Georgetown faculty.

Images of people who are at all controversial are in most cases
dreams based on few or no facts at all. Our minds delight in dwelling
on the fantastic. It really does not matter how we feel about the
individual, whether it is admiration or dislike, the dreaming tendency
is there nevertheless. To a great extent, such is the situation of
Dr. Carroll Quigley. Being the extremely intense person that he is,
particularly in his approach to life, many stories and wishful dreams
have developed around his person. This, then, is an attempt to set
the record straight.

Dr. Quigley was born in Boston in 1910. He attended the Boston
Latin School from 1924 to 1929. His scholastic record there was one
of an honor student who was dedicated to his work. For example,
in his Senior year he took seven courses. This meant that he had
no study periods, had to cut his military drill, and do his homework
during his lunch time. The extra course was a science; thus he was
at once taking physics and chemistry. His best subject had been
mathematics, in which on several occasions he received a score of
one hundred on the monthly reports sent home. During his senior
year he was Associate Editor of the Register, the high school paper
which is the oldest in the country. For three of his articles Carroll
Quigley was awarded highest individual honors in the country by
a committee of the Quill and Scroll headed by George Gallup (of
the U.S. opinion polls) which had examined the writings of over fifty
thousand high school journalists.

LIFE

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -20

As a result of this contest and his extremely high scores on the
English Achievement Examination, he received credit for most of the
required English courses that he was to take later at Harvard. This
proved to be very important, as it enabled him to spend more time
on the courses of his direct interest.

Bio-Chemistry was to be his major. In his freshman year he took,
among other things, experimental physics and calculus. In the latter
he turned in a perfect final examination, for which he received an
“A+”. But there was a problem, since he also was required to take
something in the social sciences. He chose a history course called
“Europe Since the Fall of Rome” (receiving a “C” as a final grade)
which was given by a professor who opened for him a new horizon
in history. In his sophomore year he changed his major to history
and then somehow managed to spend more time on political science
(a total of thirty hours) than in any other field. When asked why he
did this, he said that he was interested in the development of ideas.

In his junior year he took three courses, one a graduate course in
History of Political Theory with Professor Charles Howard Mcllwain.
This he took by special permission, the only junior to have done
so. In his senior year there were only two courses, but as an Honor
Student he was obliged to write a thesis; his concerned “The Influence
of the Romantic Movement on Political Theory.” In 1933 he was
graduated by Harvard University magna cum laude and as the top
history student of his class. As a result of his fine record he was
awarded the Dillaway Fellowship.

He got his master’s degree in one year and at the end of the second
year of graduate work he stood for his oral examination for a Ph.D.
His areas of study were, to say the least, varied. Included among
them were Russian History, Constitutional History of England, and
the History of France (1461 to 1815). The Chairman of the examining
board, Professor Mcllwain, a trustee of Princeton, was most impressed
with the examination, especially with Mr. Quigley’s ability to answer
his opening question with a long quotation in Latin from the writings

21 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln in the 13th Century. As a
result of his proficiency, Dr. Quigley was given a job at Princeton,
where he taught for two years.

At the end of the two years Harvard granted Carroll Quigley a
travelling fellowship to go to Europe to write as a doctoral dissertation
a study of the Napoleonic public administration of the Kingdom of
Italy (1805 to 1814). He took with him his nineteen year old bride,
Lillian Fox Quigley. In Paris they lived for five months with a French
viscount and his wife, their daughter and son-in-law, the count of
Brabant. Because of these connections most of their associations
in France were with monarchists and nobles, a strange experience
during the first “Popular Front Government.” In January, 1938, they
went to Milan where they stayed several months while he examined
the manuscripts in the rich archives. The finished thesis, bound
in three large volumes (by an Italian who embossed the author’s
name in gold on the cover as “Qiugley” ), was delivered to Harvard
by messenger. The Ph.D. was awarded in absentia in June 1938.
The diploma, which Dr. Quigley picked up that September, has yet
to be unrolled!

While returning from Europe on the lie de France, he received a
telegram from Harvard University offering him a job. He accepted
the offer and thus tutored honor students in Ancient and Medieval
History. While at Harvard he took advantage of its vast and extremely
rich collection on Italian history (among the best in the country) to
continue his study on the subject.

In 1941, the late Father Walsh invited Dr. Quigley to come to
Georgetown to lecture on history. Dr. Quigley accepted because he
felt he needed experience in lecturing, as all of his work thus far had
been in the preceptorial work at Princeton (directing round tables of
seven students) and tutoring honor students at Harvard, with but an
occasional lecture.

He certainly has obtained all the experience he wanted at
Georgetown!

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“Development of Civilization” was his first course, and he is now
delivering it for the twenty-first year. It was first worked out in 1934
as the first version of his recently published book, The Evolution of
Civilizations. The second version of the book was produced in 1942
in a suite of rooms at Princeton (this was to be his last summer off
from teaching in eighteen years). The third and last revision of the
book was written in the space of about five weeks in the fall of 1 958.

In the spring of 1943 the School of Foreign Service dedicated itself
in full to the war effort. In one week under the personal direction of
Fr. Walsh the Foreign Area and Language Program was established
as a part of the Army Specialized Training Program. In the fall of
1943, Professor Quigley had close to 700 students in one class,
held in Gaston Hall. In this course Dr. Quigley lectured five hours a
week continually for nine months on the “History of Europe in the
Twentieth Century” — without finishing what he wanted to say on the
subject. Most of the students for this course were college graduates
and fifty-five had Ph.D.’s.

Early in the war the School recognized that its graduates had difficulty
getting commissions in the Navy because of their poor background
in mathematics. So Dr. Quigley gave an elective course in college
algebra to Foreign Service students, most of whom have had little
inclination in that direction.

At the end of the war, when the School of Foreign Service enrollment
felt the tidal wave of veterans, the student body was over 2,200. In the
fall of 1 947 Dr. Quigley had 1 ,307 students, including two sections of
about 400 each (at present in his four courses he has a total of 400).

In this period he taught courses on the Fascist state, Public
Administration, Government Regulation of Industry, and United States
History (which he taught from 1942, when almost everyone in the
department was called for duty in the army, until February of 1946,
when Dr. Jules Davids joined the faculty of Georgetown).

Dr. Quigley is a consultant in American History for the Smithsonian
Institution. His chief work there has been to draw a detailed plan for

23 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

layout of the new Museum of History and Technology now under
construction. He has been consultant on numerous occasions to the
Industrial College of the Armed Forces at Fort McNair, his work being
particularly connected with questions of curriculum reform. For the
last twelve years Dr. Quigley has annually lectured to the Industrial
College (usually on the History of Czarist Russia).

In addition, he was consultant to the Select House Committee on
Astronautics and Space Exploration, which set up the present space
agency. It was in connection with this work that Professor Quigley
made his first flight in an airplane — Washington to San Francisco
— to inspect the Ames Laboratory at Moffett Field.

Professor Quigley’s versatility may be judged from the fact that
during the last week of October 1961, he had planned to lecture to
a government agency on Russian History, lecture at another local
University on African History, testify before the Senate Anti-Trust
and Monopoly Committee on American business practices, and
spend five days in Boston as an invited delegate to the UNESCO
Conference on Africa.

Dr. Quigley, in a unique way, bears out Henry Adams’ observation
that, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence
stops.” There are no means available to measure the intellectual
impact and the far-reaching effects of his influence on the minds
of his students. For this reason it is impossible to give Dr. Quigley
recognition commensurate with his value to thousands of Georgetown
students since his arrival here from Harvard in the Fall of 1941.

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"QUIGLEY... MAKING BIRCHERS BARK"

An article by Wes Christenson in Georgetown Today,
Volume 4, Number 4 (March 1972), pp 12-13.

Georgetown Professor Carroll Quigley, doing some writing on his
West Virginia farm, picked up the ringing telephone and answered
it. The man on the other end of the line said he was from Dallas and
wanted to ask the Georgetown historian “a few questions.”

He did. For 40 minutes. When Dr. Quigley begged to be allowed
to get back to his books, the caller said: “Just one more question,
Professor. Why is Governor Nelson Rockefeller a Communist?”

Dr. Quigley has been plagued by hundreds of letters and telephone
calls from the American political spectrum’s far right since he wrote
his well-known Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our
Time in 1966.

The John Birch Society, the Liberty Lobby, the Phyllis Schafly Report
and the telephone outlet known as “Let Freedom Ring” are among
the groups which have been titillated by the book but strangely have
denounced the author.

The far right-wingers claim that Dr. Quigley’s 1,348-page book,
which sold some 8,000 copies and is now indefinitely out of stock,
reveals the existence of a conspiracy by international capitalists on
Wall Street and in London to take over the world and turn it over
to the Communists. What’s more, Dr. Quigley is an “insider” in the
scheme, they charge.

The Georgetown historian says that’s nonsense, that he never wrote
as much, and that he is not, as the right-wingers charge, a member
of this group of super rich and elite “pro-Communist insiders.”

One right-wing author, in particular, has been giving Dr. Quigley a
hard time. He is W. Cleon Skousen, a teacher of religion at Brigham

25 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

Young University in Provo, Utah, whose background, Dr, Quigley
said, includes 16 years with the FBI, four years as Salt Lake City’s
police chief and 10 years as editorial director of the magazine Law
And Order.

Professor Skousen, who wrote The Naked Communist in 1961, has
followed it up with The Naked Capitalist: A Review and Commentary
on Dr. Carroll Quigley’s Book, Tragedy and Hope , a 1 2 1 -page treatise
which has 30 pages of direct quotations from Dr. Quigley’s book.

Meanwhile, the Utah professor has sold more than 55,000 copies
of his book, and the Washington office of Liberty Lobby estimates it
sells 25 copies a day now at $2 each. What’s more, Dr. Quigley is
less than happy with Professor Skousen’s “lifting” 30 pages of his
quotations without permission and, Dr. Quigley thinks, in violation of
copyright laws.

“Skousen’s book is full of misrepresentations and factual errors,”
Professor Quigley said. “He claims that I have written of a conspiracy
of the super-rich who are pro-Communist and wish to take over the
world and that I’m a member of this group. But I never called it a
conspiracy and don’t regard it as such. “I’m not an ‘insider’ of these
rich persons,” Dr. Quigley continued, “although Skousen thinks so. I
happen to know some of them and liked them, although I disagreed
with some of the things they did before 1940.”

Skousen also claims, Dr. Quigley believes, the influential group of
Wall Street financiers still exists and controls the country. “I never said
that,” Dr. Quigley said flatly. “In fact, they never were in a position to
‘control’ it, merely to influence political events.”

The influential Wall Street group of which he wrote about 25 pages
in Tragedy and Hope ceased to exist about 1 940, Dr. Quigley claims.
He also faults Skousen for saying that Tragedy and Hope's intention
was, in Dr. Quigley’s words, “to reveal anything, least of all a purely
hypothetical controversy. My only desire was to present a balanced
picture of the 70 years from 1895-1965. The book is based on more
than 25 years of research.”

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Meanwhile, Tragedy and Hope is becoming a rare commodity
following the publicity from right-wing groups. Copies often aren’t
returned to libraries around the country, although some right-wingers
claim that left-wing librarians are removing it to “suppress” Dr Quigley’s
“revelations.”

Some rightists are claiming that Macmillan, Tragedy and Hope’s
publishers, won’t reprint it because Macmillan allegedly has had
second thoughts and now wants to hush up Dr. Quigley’s “findings.”

Second-hand copies are being sold in bookstores now at $20 and
up, with waiting lists of 12 to 20 persons seeking copies. Classified
advertisements seeking the book are not uncommon in varied
periodicals.

Dr. Quigley says Tragedy and Hope, priced at $12.95 five years ago,
never could be sold for that price today because “it was underpriced
then. It cost less than a penny a page, when most hard-backed books
now sell for at least two cents a page. I doubt if a reprinted version
could be priced at $20 or more.”

The Georgetown historian, who has been taking the whole thing in a
combination of stride and amusement, is nevertheless irked because
the controversy takes up so much of his time.

School of Foreign Service alumni regularly write, wanting to know
more. (Dr. Quigley’s “Development of Civilization” course was named
their favorite in a recent survey of SFS alumni of 1955-69.) People
from all over the U.S. send in clippings about him from right-wing
publications.

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CARROLL QUIGLEY

Ironically, the parts of Tragedy and Hope from which Professor
Skousen quotes most freely are in the second half of the volume, still
available at $3.95 in paperback from Collier Books under the title:
The World Since 1939: A History." Georgetown alumni who have lost
their copies of Tragedy and Hope,” Dr. Quigley said, “can buy the
676-page paperback if they want to check my quotations.”

His eyes twinkled and his accent from his Boston Latin School and
Harvard days became even more pronounced: “You know, if enough
people buy the paperback, maybe I will be rich. But not as rich as
the right-wingers think I am, with all my supposed ‘inside’ Wall Street
connections.”

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THE PROFESSOR WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

The Washington Post Sunday Magazine
23 March 1975

Borrowing a few crucial pages from his book,
the ultra-right made a scholar an unwilling hero.

By Rudy Maxa Collage (below) by Allen Appel,
based on a photo by Matthew Lewis.

Greetings, Dr. Quigley: With reference to your book, Tragedy
and Hope, at which I am presently directing much of my energies,

I would appreciate a short explanation as to why you generally
approve of the conspiracy. I enclose a self-addressed envelope
for your convenience.

— from a letter postmarked Rahway, N.J.

In 1966, Macmillan Company published the history of the world
between 1895 and 1965 as seen through the cool, gray eyes of Carroll
Quigley, a professor of history at Georgetown’s School of Foreign
Service. The 1 ,348-page tome, called Tragedy and Hope, was a
commanding work, 20 years in the writing, that added to Quigley’s
considerable national reputation as a historian.

But though he had no way of knowing it, Quigley had just written
his own ticket to a curious kind of fame. He was about to become a
reluctant hero to Americans who believe the world is neatly controlled
by a clique of international bankers and their cronies. He was about
to learn of the country’s awesome appetite for believing a grand
conspiracy causes everything from big wars to bad weather.

Strangers would soon call to bend Quigley’s ear about secret
societies. Insistent letters from Rahway, N.J., among other places,

29 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

would clutter his desk. And eventually, Tragedy and Hope would be
pirated by zealots who would sell the book in the same brochures
that advertise such doomsday products as “Minutemen Survival
Tabs,” concentrated vitamin tablets to help patriots survive sieges
by foreign enemies.

It was the John Birch Society that really catapulted — or dragged
— Quigley front-and-center into the conspiracy picture. Just before
the 1972 primary, voters in New Hampshire opened their mail and
found copies of a breathlessly-written paperback, None Dare Call
It Conspiracy. The book, researched, written and recommended by
Birch Society members, warned that public figures as different as
John Gardner and Henry Kissinger were part of a conspiracy centered
around the Establishment’s unofficial club, New York’s Council on
Foreign Relations.

For identifying “a power-mad clique (that) wants to control the world,” Quigley
was labeled “the Joseph Valachi of political conspiracies.”

None Dare Call It Conspiracy used exclamation points, charts of
power networks and heavy rhetoric to awaken Americans to their
diminishing freedoms. And much of the hoopla was based on a mere

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25 pages from Quigley’s book which, None Dare Call It Conspiracy
said, “revealed the existence of the conspiratorial network” of a
“power-mad clique (that) wants to control and rule the world.” Quigley
was “the Joseph Valachi of political conspiracies” for fingering the
bankers and power brokers — the Insiders.” And a photograph of
Quigley shared a page with no less than financier J. P. Morgan.

John Birch Society President Robert Welch predicted distribution of
1 5 million copies of None Dare Call It Conspiracy, part of a “gigantic
flare from educational materials called forth by the emotions and
events of a crucial election year.” As copies began to spread across
the country, Quigley began to grasp what the selective, unauthorized
quotation from his work could mean. The approach to history taken
by the authors of None Dare Call It Conspiracy offended Quigley’s
scholastic sensibilities. Worse, he found he could not fight back
against the misinformation he felt was being disseminated with the aid
of his research and his name. “It blackened my reputation,” Quigley
said, “amongst scholarly historians who are going to say, ‘Oh, he’s
one of those right-wing nuts.’”

Professor Carroll Quigley — B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., all from
Harvard in the ‘30s — is a trim, engaging man who points to his
good-sized nose and broad, high forehead with some pride. The
physical characteristics mark him as a Carroll and a stroll past the
statue of Georgetown University’s founder, John Carroll, points up
the resemblance.

Quigley does not descend directly from those Carrolls, the landed
Marylanders who were influential enough in the Revolutionary years
to have a signature on the Constitution. Instead, Quigley’s maternal
ancestors were the less affluent Carrolls left behind in Ireland who
only got around to making it to Halifax a few generations ago. On his
father’s side, the Quigleys were so poor they couldn’t even wait for
the potato famine to leave Ireland for Boston in 1828.

Quigley talks genealogy with a historian’s precision, spins family
stories like a true Irishman, and more: he understands, and tells his

31 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

listener he understands, how his past shaped him. Young Carroll
Quigley lived on the edge of the Irish ghetto in Boston and mixed
it up in the streets with Yankees, Italians, Russian Jews and a few
blacks, a melting pot of a childhood that Quigley says cast a strong
base for his adult writings and teachings.

He cultivated the spirit of the Irish and honed the intellectual interests
of the Yankees while attending the Boston Latin School, whose list of
distinguished graduates stretches from Benjamin Franklin to Leonard
Bernstein. Harvard came next in a natural sort of way and Quigley
intended to go into science until he decided “there were a lot a good
people in science but nobody good in history.”

He kept current in science but formally attacked history; he was
no slouch in either. Quigley’s Harvard tutor in medieval and ancient
history, the late Donald McKay, told him he could be Harvard’s first
summa cum laude graduate in history in seven years — “You could
be a summa!” he exhorted Quigley — but the undergraduate chose
instead to settle for a magna cum laude for fear of shortchanging his
emotional development.

After teaching stints at Princeton and Harvard, Quigley came to
Georgetown University in 1941 and became an on-line resource
for Washington. He lectured at the Industrial College of the Armed
Forces, the Brookings Institution, the Stare Department’s Foreign
Service Institute and consulted with the Smithsonian and the Senate
Select Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

To those duties and to his teachings he brought his holist philosophy,
the belief that knowledge cannot be divided into parts, that the
world can be viewed only as an interlocking, complex system. The
philosophy complemented his life: he had reveled in the traditions
and contrasts of his neighborhood, eschewed the summa in favor of
keeping his emotional and social development on track, and applied
himself to science and economics as well as history. His passion to
consider the “big picture” never cooled.

Quigley has no small regret that some of the best minds of his

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generation insist on treating the world in a 19th Century fashion
by tinkering with its problems as a mechanic looks at an engine:
spreading the separate parts on the floor and considering each one
to find the malfunction. This reductionist way of thinking, Quigley
maintains, has gotten Western civilization into all kinds of trouble.

We cluck our tongues about inflation while stores offer expensive
Christmas goods with liberal credit schedules that don’t call for a
first payment until spring. We bellyache about accumulating trash
and energy shortages but spend precious little discovering how
garbage can become an energy source. That kind of small thinking
annoys Professor Carroll Quigley. It annoys him almost as much as
if someone took the narrow view that a clique of “Insiders” controlled
the world.

The historian’s mind remembers the summer of ‘43 well: the
temperature topped 90 degrees 59 days that year, and one stretch
lasted 15 days. Quigley, still so Boston formal that he kept his suitcoat
on during lectures, was charged with teaching the history of the world
to 750 military personnel who had just finished their heavy mid-day
meal. Five days a week, for one year, Quigley stood in Gaston Hall
and prepared the soldiers for the military occupation of the countries
in the European theater that the Allied forces expected to conquer.

From those frenzied months of preparing for his crash courses
grew Quigley’s eight-pound Tragedy and Hope. The title reflects his
feeling that “Western civilization is going down the drain.” That is the
tragedy. When the book came out in 1 966, Quigley honestly thought
the whole show could he salvaged; that was his hope. He will not
say as much today.

The section in his history that was to fascinate the political right
concerned the formation of the Council on Foreign Relations and
the actions of several famous banking houses. Quigley broke some
new ground in his research in the late 1 940s; 20 years later the right
seized Quigley’s findings and drew some broad conclusions.

Quigley had noticed that many prominent Englishmen and

33 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

outstanding British scholars were members of an honorary society
called Fellows of All Souls College. While Quigley was studying the
149 members, a former Fellow visited Washington to speak with
Quigley. Quigley began chatting with him about the Fellows of All
Souls College: “You mean the Round Table Group.”, the visitor said.
What Quigley asked, “is it the Round Table Group?” After considerable
research, Quigley knew.

“I learned the Round Table Group was very influential,” Quigley
says. “I knew they were the real founders of the Royal Institute of
International Affairs and I knew they were the founders of the Institute
of Pacific Relations. I knew that they were the godfathers of the
Council on Foreign Relations. So I began to put this thing together
and I found that this group was working for a number of things.

“It was a secret group. Its members were working to federate the
English-speaking world. They were closely linked to international
bankers. They were working to establish what I call a three-power
world: England and the U.S., Hitler’s Germany and Soviet Russia.
They said, ‘We can control Germany because it is boxed in between
the Atlantic bloc and the Russians. The Russians will behave because
they’re boxed in between the Atlantic bloc and the American Navy
in Singapore.’ Now, notice that this is essentially a balance of power
system,” Quigley says.

None Dare Call It Conspiracy, using Quigley’s data, attributed to
the Round Table Group a lust for world domination. Its sympathies
were pro-Communist, anti-Capitalist, said the Birch Society book.

“They thought Dr. Carroll Quigley proved everything.” Quigley says.
“For example, they constantly misquote me to this effect: that Lord
Milner (the dominant trustee of the Cecil Rhodes Trust and a heavy
in the Round Table Group) helped finance the Bolsheviks. I have
been through the greater part of Milner’s private papers and have
found no evidence to support that.

“Further, None Due Call It Conspiracy insists that international
bankers were a single bloc, were all powerful and remain so today.

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -34

I, on the contrary, stated in my book that they were much divided,
often fought among themselves, had great influence but not control
of political life and were sharply reduced in power about 1931-1940,
when they became less influential than monopolized industry.”

Tragedy and Hope received mixed, though generally favorable,
reviews. Opined the Library Journal: “Mr. Quigley . . . has written
a very remarkable book: very long, very detailed, very critical, very
daring and very good.... His coverage of the world is amazingly
encyclopedic and well-balanced.” Saturday Review was less flattering:
“For those who approve of this way of writing history, his rambling
volume may have a certain excellence.” Said the New York Times:
“The book provides a business-like narrative in which an incredible
amount of information is compressed — and in some cases presented
— with drama and distinction.”

But from the right, Quigley earned kudos for nailing the seminal
data on the Round Table Group that helped found the Council on
Foreign Relations. His dispassionate presentation, however, did not
sit so well. While Quigley’s findings earned him pages of quotation (in
apparent violation of copyright laws), None Dare Call It Conspiracy
sniped: “... the conspirators have had no qualms about fomenting
wars, depressions and hatred. They want a monopoly which would
eliminate all competitors and destroy the free enterprise system. And
Professor Quigley of Harvard, Princeton and Georgetown approves!”

“You see,” Quigley says, “originally the John Birch periodical had
me as a great guy for revealing everything. But then they became
absolutely sour and now they denounce me as a member of the
Establishment. I’m just baffled by the whole thing.”

35 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

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NONE DARE CALL IT

CONSPIRACY

□

■

9 ^

teywXMC tommri

THE

NAKED

CAPITALIST

W. CLEON SKOUSEN

None Dare Call It Conspiracy The Naked Capitalist

Quigley was first quoted by Gary Allen, the author of None Dare
Call It Conspiracy, in a 1968 book called Nixon: The Man Behind
the Mask. Then, an instructor at Brigham Young University in Utah,
a Cleo[n] Skousens, wrote The Naked Capitalist and again quoted
Quigley extensively. But None Dare Call It Conspiracy was the big
seller. Nearly five million copies of the book have been sold to date,
according to the publisher, Concord Press in California, and a new
German language edition is selling well.

Author and Birch Society member Gary Allen is one of Quigley’s
biggest fans, but he laughs a huge laugh when told Quigley is the
most reluctant of heroes. Of course, says Allen good-naturedly, the
Establishment could not be pleased Quigley revealed so much about a
Council on Foreign Relation, which prefers to swing its weight quietly.

“They don’t like this thing talked about because it is the real power
structure,” Allen says from California. “Dr. Quigley let the cat out of
the bag. He had the liberal academic credentials. I’m sure a lot of
people are very unhappy with him for telling tales out of school.

Allen did not talk to Quigley before he began quoting from Tragedy
and Hope because Allen understood from “some intelligence people
in Washington” that Quigley was arrogant and unapproachable. “So

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I took him at his word that he had had access to the private records
of the Round Table Group,” Allen says. “Now he’s trying to duck the
importance of what he wrote by saying we picked only a few pages
out of a 1 ,400-page book.”

After the books came the letters. Brother Nelson Goodwin, a self-
styled Nevada “hobo” evangelist was moved last summer to take
pencil in hand and write, “Brother Carroll: I have heard somewhere
that ‘Snake Eyes Joe Enlai’ and ‘Mousey Dung’ and ‘Snake in the
Grass Fidel Castro’ all received their poison atheistic doctrine in the
Universities and Colleges of America. Thank God for Men like you
who love our Beautiful United States, the finest nation on the earth.
Others, like the writer from Rahway, wanted to know why Quigley
“approved of the conspiracy.” Quigley has gotten handy at fielding
the curve balls.

“You can’t believe what people think,” he says. “Some believe it is
all a Jewish conspiracy, that is part of the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion which we now know were perpetuated by the Czarist Russian
police force in 1 904. And that this conspiracy is the same thing as the
Illuminati, a secret society founded in 1776 in Bavaria. And that the
Illuminati are a branch of the Masons. There are some people who say
the Society of Cincinnati, of which George Washington was a member
during the American Revolution, was a branch of the Illuminati and
that’s why the Masons built their monument in Alexandria to George
Washington, since he was a Mason and head of the Illuminati before
he helped start the Society of Cincinnati. See what I mean?”

If he chose to, Quigley could probably spend the rest of his life
battling the people who are using his research to bolster their own
conclusions. But he has narrowed the battle to stopping the illegal
publication of Tragedy and Hope.

For reasons not clear to Quigley (but he does not attribute it to any
conspiracy), Macmillan stopped publishing Tragedy and Hope alter it
sold 9,000 copies. Suddenly pirate editions began appearing, almost
exact photo-reproductions with identical dust jackets and binding.

37 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

The original book had yellow-edged pages, a touch either missed or
considered too costly by whoever decided to begin offering Tragedy
and Hope on the sly. Carroll Quigley quickly became a right-wing
underground sensation.

“We have discovered a limited quantity which we offer to informed
patriots on a first come, first served basis for only $20 each,” read
one brochure offering the pirate copies. “For the first time, one of
the ‘insiders’ of the international ‘elite’ gives a candid account of the
world of monopoly capitalism. Not easy reading, but it is essential
reading for those who consider themselves in-depth students of the
conspiracy.”

Quigley hired a lawyer who managed to stop at least one of the
pirate presses. Then, working through an intermediary, Quigley sold
a West Coast press the right to re-print 2,000 copies of his book to
retail for $25 each, from the Georgetown University bookstore. As
long as the right insists on selling his book, Quigley reasons he might
as well get his piece of the action. He has no such interest in jumping
aboard the conspiracy bandwagon.

“I generally think that any conspiracy theory of history is nonsense,”
Quigley says, “for the simple reason that most conspiracies that we
know about seem to me to be conspiracies of losers, people who
have been defeated on the historical platforms of public happenings.
The Ku Klux Klan had its arguments destroyed and defeated in the
Civil War but because it was not prepared to accept that, the KKK
formed a conspiracy to fight underground.

“Now, there is not the slightest doubt that the international bankers
have tried to make banking into a mystery. But we are dealing with two
different things. I don’t think that is a conspiracy; because something
is a secret does not mean it is a conspiracy.”

The seductive beauty of believing the world is in the grip of one
conspiracy or another, however, is that any argument against a
conspiracy is simply proof of how clever the conspirators are; red
herrings are only a mark of the cunning of the conspirators, says the

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true believer.

Quigley is weary of tilting with conspiratorial windmills. He is 65 and
intends to retire after this academic year. He has books unfinished.
None of which, he hastens to add, have to do with conspiracy.

On his farm in West Virginia, Quigley is working on a book on the
relationship of weapon systems to the stability of the world. He rests
there on weekends and gardens between writing. But still the calls
come, many from Texas, Florida and California, Quigley notices. One
conspiracy hound called and talked for 20 minutes. Quigley finally
said he had to return to his work.

“Just one more question,” the caller said. “Just tell me this: why is
Nelson Rockefeller a Communist?”

“I don’t know,” replied Quigley evenly. “I don’t think he is but if you
know he is and you want to know why he is, why don’t you call him
up and ask him.”

39 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

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QUIGLEY: ANOTHER SIDE
OF A REFLECTIVE MAN

by Helen E. Veit
(Introduction by Terrence Boyle)
Washington, D. C., SFS ‘69

Helen Elizabeth Veit was the person closest to Carroll Quigley
during the last ten years of his life. No one living today has a better
understanding of the man and of his thinking.

Sadly, the last few years of Dr. Quigley’s life as a teacher coincided
with the late 1960s and early 1970s, when student unrest and anti-
intellectualism unsettled college campuses all over this country. In
1969-70 that spirit came violently to Georgetown University and
focused especially on the very few teachers like Prof. Quigley who
adamantly refused to lower academic standards, no matter what
political cause du jour was being offered as a reason.

When, therefore, in May 1970, Dr. Quigley and a very few other
G.U. professors refused-with, by the way, no support from the craven
University Administration of the day-to accede to demands that all
classes and examinations be canceled in supposed support of “a
nationwide protest” against American military involvement in Indo-
china, a band of student activists vowed to prevent classes and
examinations from being held, no matter what. Several of these
protesters invaded Dr. Quigley’s classroom, physically roughed him
up, and prevented his final examination from being given that day.

Much of the joy of teaching left Carroll Quigley in the next few years.
He complained bitterly that his 1 970s college students were woefully
under-educated and ill-prepared for college level work and that too
many of them had their minds elsewhere, fixated more on bringing

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about a social revolution than on achieving an education.

And then, when a few years later Dr. Quigley died suddenly, just
months after retiring from teaching, some remaining leftist students
at G.U., who had so strongly opposed Quigley’s tough grading
standards, his teaching of the detested “canon of dead white males,”
and especially his insistent reliance on logic and reasoning, rather
than on emotion and intuition, decided they would have the last word
on this man by writing in the school newspaper a shallow obituary
criticizing Quigley for not having been more a part of their “real” lives.

Helen Veit wrote a most fitting and irenic reply, which we reproduce
here:

To the Editor:

As a student, academic assistant, and friend of Carroll Quigley,

I am unhappy to think that Bob McGillicuddy’s article, “Carroll
Quigley: A Student’s Elegy” (the Voice, Feb. 8, 1977), should be
the Georgetown student’s last picture of this man.

Surely, after his long and dedicated service to Georgetown and
its students, he deserves a more sympathetic understanding in
the personal sense, to complement McGillicuddy’s insights into
his thought. I do not seek to make excuses for him. He would be
the last person to want that: accepting personal responsibility
for one’s actions was one of his first principles. But a better
perspective may be gained by viewing recent events in the
context of his whole career.

Until 1969-71, teaching Georgetown students was one of
the most important and rewarding aspects of his life. Then
came the campus disturbances, which, for reasons related

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more to his dynamic and outspoken personality than to any
substantive grievance, focused disproportionately on him. At
that point, he did, indeed, “turn inward,” to concentrate on his
writing and live his private life. After more than thirty years of
almost uninterrupted teaching, it seems only reasonable that he
should want time for other things, for activities made difficult or
impossible by his commitment to lecture to hundreds of students
a year.

It is understandably difficult for a student to see that teaching
was not the only thing in Carroll Quigley’s life, but anyone who
listened to him must remember his frequent references to the
books he wanted to write when he had time, and must know
how much he loved and learned from his West Virginia farm. As
an undergraduate, I, too, believed teaching was all-important to
him; later I learned that he wanted his retirement to be virtually a
second career, during which he would write books summing up a
lifetime of intense study and experience. Sadly, in the event, his
life of teaching was his only life.

Impatient he may have been; arrogant he was not. His
emphatic manner derived from his experience of teaching large
classes and the need for catching and retaining their attention.
But he never believed that he had “answers”; what he taught
was methods of approaching problems. He often stressed how
little we know about the important things of life, especially human
relationships. What he sought above all was to help people to
become mature, by realizing their potentials and understanding
that material things, however necessary, should never be ends
themselves, while what is important is seeking the truth in
cooperation with others, with the knowledge that one will never
find it.

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Nor was he ever cynical, much as he deplored inefficiency and
ignorance. His beliefs and principles were of the highest order;
his greatest joy came from finding people who could meet his
standards, and from whom he could learn.

Students should grant to others the same degree of
understanding they ask for themselves; they should realize that
even professors have private lives and the need for intellectual
activities outside the classroom. Carroll Quigley’s impatience
came from his deep awareness that a man who wants to do so
much can never have enough time. He was a man in a hurry —
events have proved him right.

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THE EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATIONS

by Harry J. Hogan to the second (1979) edition of Carroll Quigley’s The
Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis.

Dr. Hogan, now retired, has been a professor, administrator,
and lawyer.

He received his B.A. magna cum laude from Princeton University,
his LL.B. from Columbia Law School, and his Ph.D. in American
history from George Washington University.

His articles have appeared in the American Bar Association
Journal, the Journal of Politics, and other periodicals.

The Evolution of Civilizations expresses two dimensions of its author,
Carroll Quigley, that most extraordinary historian, philosopher, and
teacher. In the first place, its scope is wide-ranging, covering the
whole of man’s activities throughout time. Second, it is analytic, not
merely descriptive. It attempts a categorization of man’s activities
in sequential fashion so as to provide a causal explanation of the
stages of civilization.

Quigley coupled enormous capacity for work with a peculiarly
“scientific” approach. He believed that it should be possible to examine
the data and draw conclusions. As a boy at the Boston Latin School,
his academic interests were mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Yet
during his senior year he was also associate editor of the Register,
the oldest high school paper in the country. His articles were singled
out for national awards by a national committee headed by George
Gallup.

At Harvard, biochemistry was to be his major. But Harvard,
expressing then a belief regarding a well-rounded education to which
it has now returned, required a core curriculum including a course in
the humanities. Quigley chose a history course, “Europe Since the

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Fall of Rome.” Always a contrary man, he was graded at the top of
his class in physics and calculus and drew a C in the history course.
But the development of ideas began to assert its fascination for him,
so he elected to major in history. He graduated magna cum laude as
the top history student in his class.

Quigley was always impatient. He stood for his doctorate oral
examination at the end of his second year of graduate studies.
Charles Howard Mcllwain, chairman of the examining board, was
very impressed by Quigley’s answer to his opening question; the
answer included a long quotation in Latin from Robert Grosseteste,
bishop of Lincoln in the thirteenth century. Professor Mcllwain sent
Quigley to Princeton University as a graduate student instructor.

In the spring of 1937 I was a student in my senior year at Princeton.
Quigley was my preceptor in medieval history. He was Boston Irish; I
was New York Irish. Both of us, Catholics adventuring in a strangely
Protestant establishment world, were fascinated by the Western
intellectual tradition anchored in Augustine, Abelard, and Aquinas that
seemed to have so much more richness and depth than contemporary
liberalism. We became very close in a treasured friendship that was
terminated only by his death.

In the course of rereading The Evolution of Civilizations I was
reminded of the intensity of our dialogue. In Quigley’s view, which I
shared, our age was one of irrationality. That spring we talked about
what career decisions I should make. At his urging I applied to and
was admitted by the Harvard Graduate School in History. But I had
reservations about an academic career in the study of the history
that I loved, on the ground that on Quigley’s own analysis the social
decisions of importance in our lifetime would be made in ad hoc
irrational fashion in the street. On that reasoning, finally I transferred
to law school.

In Princeton, Carroll Quigley met and married Lillian Fox. They spent
their honeymoon in Paris and Italy on a fellowship to write his doctoral
dissertation, a study of the public administration of the Kingdom of

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Italy, 1805-14. The development of the state in western Europe over
the last thousand years always fascinated Quigley. He regarded the
development of public administration in the Napoleonic states as a
major step in the evolution of the modern state. It always frustrated
him that each nation, including our own, regards its own history as
unique and the history of other nations as irrelevant to it.

In 1938-41, Quigley served a stint at Harvard, tutoring graduate
students in ancient and medieval history. It offered little opportunity
for the development of cosmic views and he was less than completely
content there. It was, however, a happy experience for me. I had
entered Harvard Law School. We began the practice of having
breakfast together at Carroll and Lillian’s apartment.

In 1941 Quigley accepted a teaching appointment at Georgetown’s
School of Foreign Service. It was to engage his primary energies
throughout the rest of his busy life. There he became an almost
legendary teacher. He chose to teach a Course, “The Development of
Civilization,” required of the incoming class, and that course ultimately
provided the structure and substance for The Evolution of Civilizations.
As a course in his hands, it was a vital intellectual experience for
young students, a mind-opening adventure. Foreign Service School
graduates, meeting years later in careers around the world, would
establish rapport with each other by describing their experience in
his class. It was an intellectual initiation with remembered impact that
could be shared by people who had graduated years apart.

The fortunes of life brought us together again. During World War II I
served as a very junior officer on Admiral King’s staff in Washington.
Carroll and I saw each other frequently. Twenty years later, after
practicing law in Oregon, I came into the government with President
Kennedy. Our eldest daughter became a student under Carroll at
Georgetown University. We bought a house close by Carroll and
Lillian. I had Sunday breakfast with them for years and renewed our
discussions of the affairs of a disintegrating world.

Superb teacher Quigley was, and could justify a lifetime of prodigious

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work on that success alone. But ultimately he was more. To me he
was a figure — he would scoff at this — like Augustine, Abelard,
and Aquinas, searching for the truth through examination of ultimate
reality as it was revealed in history. Long ago, he left the church in the
formal sense. Spiritually and intellectually he never left it. He never
swerved from his search for the meaning of life. He never placed
any goal in higher priority. If the God of the Western civilization that
Quigley spent so many years studying does exist in the terms that
he saw ascribed to Him by our civilization, that God will now have
welcomed Quigley as one who has pleased him.

In an age characterized by violence, extraordinary personal
alienation, and the disintegration of family, church, and community,
Quigley chose a life dedicated to rationality. He addressed the
problem of explaining change in the world around us, first examined
by Heraclitus in ancient Greece. Beneath that constant change, so
apparent and itself so real, what is permanent and unchanging?

Quigley wanted an explanation that in its very categorization would
give meaning to a history which was a record of constant change.
Therefore the analysis had to include but not be limited to categories
of subject areas of human activity — military, political, economic,
social, religious, intellectual. It had to describe change in categories
expressed sequentially in time — mixture, gestation, expansion,
conflict, universal empire, decay, invasion. It was a most ambitious
effort to make history rationally understandable. F. E. Manuel, in his
review of this book for the American Historical Review, following its
first publication in 1961, described it as on “sounder ground” than
the work of Toynbee.

Quigley found the explanation of disintegration in the gradual
transformation of social “instruments” into “institutions,” that is, the
transformation of social arrangements functioning to meet real social
needs into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless
of real social needs. In an ideologically Platonistic society, social
arrangements are molded to express a rigidly idealized version

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of reality. Such institutionalization would not have the flexibility to
accommodate to the pressures of changing reality for which the
ideology has no categories of thought that will allow perception,
analysis, and handling. But the extraordinary distinction of Western
civilization is that its ontology allows an open-ended epistemology. It is
engaged in a constant effort to understand reality which is perceived
as in constant change. Therefore, our categories of knowledge are
themselves always subject to change. As a consequence reform is
always possible.

The question today is whether we have lost that Western view
of reality which has given our 2,000 years of history its unique
vitality, constantly pregnant with new versions of social structure.
In Evolution, Quigley describes the basic ideology of Western
civilization as expressed in the statement, “The truth unfolds in time
through a communal process.” Therefore, Quigley saw the triumph
in the thirteenth century of the moderate realism of Aquinas over
dualistic exaggerated realism derived from Platonism as the major
epistemologic triumph that opened up Western civilization. People
must constantly search for the “truth” by building upon what others
have learned. But no knowledge can be assumed to be complete and
final. It could be contradicted by new information received tomorrow.
In epistemology, Quigley always retained his belief in the scientific
method. Therefore, he saw Hegel and Marx as presumptuous, in
error, and outside the Western tradition in their analysis of history as
an ideologic dialectic culminating in the present or immediate future
in a homeostatic condition.

Quigley comments upon the constant repetition of conflict and
expansion stages in Western history. That reform process owes
its possibility to the uniquely Western belief that truth is continually
unfolding. Therefore Western civilization is capable of reexamining its
direction and its institutions, and changing both as appears necessary.
So in Western history, there was a succession of technological
breakthroughs in agricultural practice and in commerce. Outmoded

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institutions like feudalism and — in the commercial area — municipal
mercantilism in the period 1270-1440, and state mercantilism in the
period 1 690-181 0 were discarded. Similarly, we may also survive the
economic crisis described by Quigley as monopoly capitalism in the
present post-1900 period.

Yet Quigley perceives — correctly in my view — the possible
termination of open-ended Western civilization. With access to an
explosive technology that can tear the planet apart, coupled with
the failure of Western civilization to establish any viable system of
world government, local political authority will tend to become violent
and absolutist. As we move into irrational activism, states will seize
upon ideologies that justify absolutism. The 2,000-year separation in
Western history of state and society would then end. Western people
would rejoin those of the rest of the world in merging the two into a
single entity, authoritarian and static. The age that we are about to
enter would be an ideologic one consistent with the views of Hegel
and Marx — a homeostatic condition. That triumph would end the
Western experiment and return us to the experience of the rest of
the world — namely, that history is a sequence of stages in the rise
and fall of absolutist ideologies.

America is now in a crisis-disintegrating stage. In such a condition,
absent a philosophy, people turn readily to charismatic personalities.
So at the beginning of our time of troubles, in the depression of the
1930s, we turned to Franklin D. Roosevelt. He took us through the
depression and World War II. We were buoyed by his optimism and
reassured by the strength and confidence of his personality. Within
the Western tradition he provided us with no solutions; he simply
preserved options. When he died, all America was in shock. We had
lost our shield. Carroll came over to my place that night. We talked
in the subdued fashion of a generation that had lost its guardian and
would now have to face a hostile world on its own.

Since then we in America have been denied the easy-out of
charismatic leadership. It may just be that we shall have to follow

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the route that Quigley has marked out for us in this book. We may
have to look at our history, analyze it, establish an identity in that
analysis, and make another try at understanding reality in a fashion
consistent with that open-ended tradition.

If so, America, acting for Western civilization, must find within the
history of that civilization the intellectual and spiritual reserves to
renew itself within the tradition. Striking as was the impact of this
book at the time of its first publication, in 1961, its major impact
will be in support of that effort in the future. There is hope that in
Western civilization the future ideology will be rational. If so, it would
be consistent with an epistemology that accepts the general validity
of sensory experience and the possibility of making generalizations
from that experience, subject to modification as additional facts
are perceived. It is that epistemology which was termed moderate
realism in the thirteenth century and, in its epistemologic aspects,
is now known as the scientific method. Such a rational ideology is
probable only if it is developed out of the special history of the West.
As appreciation of that spreads, the kind of analysis that Carroll
Quigley develops in this book is the analysis that the West must use.

Such as effort would be consistent in social terms with Quigley’s view
of his own life. He greatly admired his mother, a housewife, and his
father, a Boston firechief, and described them as teaching him to do
his best at whatever he chose to put his energies. That was their way
of saying what Carroll would have described as man’s responsibility
to understand and relate actively to a continually unfolding reality.
He dedicated his life to that purpose.

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THE EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATIONS:

A REVIEW

The Evolution of Civilizations, by Carroll Quigley.

(New York, The Macmillan Company, 1960. Pp. x, 281, S5.95)

Reviewed by Elmer Louis Kayser.

A work of the importance of The Evolution of Civilizations
deserves much more than the hurried first reading that a
deadline has imposed. Reading Professor Quigley’s volume
is a pleasant, but rather exacting exercise. He demonstrates
Toynbeean erudition and non-Tonybeean brevity.

It is fortunate that a brief review is expected, for a truly
critical review would have to be longer than the book itself.

A vast time span, a tremendous area and an amazing
diversity of fields are involved. A high degree of selectivity
must be exercised in determining what material is to be
presented. The sector is small within which anyone could
claim the competence of a specialist. The work of others
must be used and judgments made. A detailed criticism under
these circumstances becomes a race between author and
critic to see who has read the latest monograph or special
study and made the soundest evaluation of it. Toynbee in
reconsidering the first ten volumes of The Study of History
in the recent twelfth volume found that there had been new
writing while he was publishing which made it desirable that
he makes changes. The blurb (author unknown) on the jacket
of the latest Toynbee volume goes so far as to assert that,
during the publication of the First Decade of Toynbee, new

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discoveries in some fields “have changed the picture almost
out of recognition.”

The present reviewer accepts the historical data which
Professor Quigley uses as what a competent scholar selected
at the time of writing as valid supports for the ideas that he
presents. The reviewer makes no attempt to examine these
individually and critically. His interest is in what the author
was trying to do, in the patterns of thinking that he sets up.

The author is thinking of aggregates of human beings as
they constitute themselves in social groups and various
types of society: parasitic societies, producing societies,
and civilizations, depending upon whether the members
have the major portion of their relationships outside the
group or within it. He finds “two dozen civilizations,” living
and dead, within the last ten millennia and suggest various
groupings. Before discussing historical change, he considers
methods of analyzing the evolution of a society, the resultant
of development and morphology. Civilizations pass through
seven stages: mixture, gestation, expansion, age of conflict,
universal empire, decay, and invasion which he offers as
a convenient way of breaking into segments an intricate
historical process.

Avery interesting chapter devoted to the physical setting of
the earliest civilizations is followed by a detailed discussion of
Mesopotamia, Canaanite and Minoan, Classical and Western
Civilizations. These discussions of the civilizations which
relate directly to the stream of Western Civilization through
historic time occupy the major portion of the study. In a final
word of conclusion, Professor Quigley states his belief that
six points have emerged from his study. The first three, he

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points out, merely underscore well-recognized and long
accepted points of view. The last three, he feels, represent
a real contribution. They are: the seven stages (which proves
as Toynbee’s does not, a basis for an analysis of the whole
course of the evolution of a civilization including the earliest
phases), an improved nomenclature and techniques for
dealing with historical problems.

Professor Quigley’s indebtedness to his predecessors is
obvious and acknowledged. While he lacks the Wagnerian
tone of Spengler and the severely classical attitudes of
Toynbee, he does have the more direct approach of the
social scientist. His heavy emphasis on scientific method in
the first chapter, even though he concludes by pointing out
the difference between the natural and social sciences in the
subjective factor, leads us to expect a much more rigorous
method than the one applied. In this case, we notice such
statements as “To be sure there are difficulties, but in some
cases, at least these can be explained away.” You wonder
again at the grading system applied to Western society in
the chart on page 81. The reviewer is not sure just how
it is determined when a civilization reaches “its peak of
achievement” and how this is related to the seven stages
of development.

All of these are matters of detail. The important fact is that the
author has distilled from a vast store of historical knowledge a
highly suggestive approach for the systematic study of major
historical movements. The real review will probably have to
wait until that traveler from New Zealand in the midst of a
vast solitude, standing on a broken arch of London Bridge,
has finished his sketch of the ruins of St. Paul’s.

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Elmer Louis Kayser is the Dean of University Students and
Professor of European History at The George Washington
University. Born in Washington, Dean Kayser holds hisA.B.,
M.A., and LL.D. from George Washington, and a PhD. from
Columbia University. Vitally interested in International Affairs,
Dean Kayser is the author of several boobs, an Associate
Editor of World Affairs, and a director of the American Peace
Society.

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CARROLL QUIGLEY:

SOME ASPECTS OE HIS LAST TWELVE YEARS

Recollections from Personal Correspondence by
Carmen Brissette-Grayson
School of Foreign Service, 1962

In the last 12 years of his life, from 1965 to 1977, Carroll Quigley
taught, observed the American scene, and reflected on his basic
values in life. He was simultaneously pessimistic and radically
optimistic. Teaching was the core of Quigley’s professional life and
neither his craving to write nor his discouragement with student
reaction of the early seventies diminished his commitment to the
classroom. “I am sure that you will enjoy teaching increasingly, as I
do,” he had written in 1965:

“it is the one way we can do a little good in the world. The task
is so important, the challenge so great, and the possibilities
for improvement and for variation as infinite that it is the most
demanding and most difficult of human activities. Even a virtuoso
violinist can be made to order easier than a good teacher.” 1

Six years later, in his 30th year of teaching at Georgetown, he was
less hopeful. “I find teaching harder every year, as the students are
less and less receptive. ...” 2 The turmoil of the Vietnam years spilled
into the lecture hall and, on at least one occasion, students disrupted
a class. He worried about the dilution of academic standards and
feared the increasing bureaucratization of education. Such problems,
he lamented, “will give you a glimmering of what teaching has become
in the tail end of a civilization. ...” 3

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Despite these pessimistic readings of student responsiveness,
the School of Foreign Service senior classes of 1973 and 1974
both honored him as the outstanding professor of the year. Quigley
himself continued throughout this period to address a variety of
audiences — bureaucrats, scientists, an Irish-American club, even
a Catholic high school religion class. “A rather daring experiment in
religious enlightenment,” he concluded in describing that encounter
with Catholic adolescents.” 4 “I accept. . . outside lectures (and also
. . . I give courses I never gave before in my final year of teaching)
because,” he explained, “it makes me clarify my own thoughts about
what is really important. I often say things in my lectures that I never
realized before.” 5

Quigley revised his lectures to the end of his teaching days even in
classes which he had taught for over a decade. “I am never satisfied
with my courses, so keep working on them.” 6 In his final weeks
at Georgetown he broke off just before Thanksgiving and told his
students in “The World Since 1914” class that there was little point
in discussing the Third World when they knew so little about how
their own society works:

“So I told them about the USA — really very hair-raising when it
is all laid out in sequence: .... 1 . cosmic hierarchy; 2. energy; 3.
agriculture; 4. food; 5. health and medical services; 6. education;
7. income flows and the worship of GROWTH; 8. inflation. . .
showing how we are violating every aspect of life by turning
everything into a ripoff because we. . . have adopted the view
that insatiable individualistic greed must run the world.” 7

He feared “that the students will come to feel that all is hopeless, so
I must. . . show them how solutions can be found by holistic methods
seeking diversity, de-centralization, communities. . .etc.” 8 Pleased
with the class response, he later recalled:

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“The students were very excited and my last lecture in which I
put the whole picture together was about the best lecture I ever
gave. That was 1 0 Dec. [1 975], my last full day of teaching after
41 years.” 9

Unlike his underlying faith in the efficacy of teaching, Quigley
found little basis for optimism about the future of American society.
A journal asked him in 1 975 to write an upbeat article on the country’s
prospects. “I told the editor that would be difficult, but I would try. I
wrote it and they refused to publish it because it was not optimistic
enough. . .” 10 In 1976 he wrote congratulating my husband for his
decision to give up any idea of leaving state politics for the federal
arena. “It is futile,” Quigley concluded, “because it is all so corrupt
and the honest ones are so incompetent. I should not say this, as
students said it to me for years and I argued with them.” 11
It was more than the institutionalization of the American political
system which concerned him: “We are living in a very dangerous age
in which insatiably greedy men are prepared to sacrifice anybody’s
health and tranquility to satisfy their own insatiable greed for money
and power.” 12 He feared that these values had virtually destroyed
the roots of the Western outlook and had made the creation of a
satisfying life in contemporary America a hazardous undertaking.
“I am aghast at what. . . selfishness, and the drive for power
have done to our society. ... I worry. . . as I find the world so
increasingly horrible that I do not see how anything as wonderful as. . .
your life can escape.” 13 Less than six months before he died he
advised: “The best thing you can do is. . . to keep some enclaves of
satisfying decent life.” 14 Yet pessimism about American society did
not weaken a radical optimism rooted in his essential values: nature,
people, and God.

The greatest source of pleasure for Quigley, outside of his scholarly
pursuits and his personal life, came from his profound love of nature.

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In 1 968 he bought an 82-acre farm near the small town of Glengary,
West Virginia:

“in the case of the permanent residents they are the same
individuals (or their offspring) that we have known for years.

We are chiefly impressed with their distinctive personalities,
and intelligence. . . marvelous, so steady, hard-working. . . and
unafraid. . . [others] were really neurotic, afraid of everything. .

This sounds like unremarkable country gossip until one realizes that
the “permanent residents” to which he refers were several generations
of bluebirds which he had been studying.

I once made the mistake of writing to him about my war of attrition
with racoons who were foraging in our trash. Quigley rushed back a
reply to prevent me from making any further intrusions in the cosmic
hierarchy:

“If the racoons make your trash disposal a problem, why
not cooperate with nature instead of resisting it? The big
solution to our pollution problems is to increase the speed of
biodegradation, and what is more natural than for animals to
eat? Here I feed a fox every night if our local skunk does not get
to it first (I buy chicken backs and necks for 19 cents a pound,
but am afraid to give these too frequently for fear they may have
injurious hormones injected into the live chickens). . . My fox
never leaves a crumb or a mark on the concrete platform where
he eats. . . . Last summer when he had a mate and young ones,
we gave him more food and he always took the best. . . away to
his family. We used to time him: it took 4 minutes before he was
back for something for himself. . .We have found that wild things
are so wonderful.” 16

He concluded with a revealing description of what to him was a
particularly satisfying weekend — writing, observing birds, and on
Saturday night: “Beethoven’s birthday, we sat. . . reading near the
fire, while the radio played all nine of HIS symphonies.” 17

Thus, discouragement about the course of American life existed
simultaneously with happiness derived from those aspects of life
he knew to be lasting: “I am fed up with. . . everything but God and
nature. . . and human beings (whom I love and pity, as I always did).” 18

His loyalty was to a religious-intellectual outlook: “I feel glad I am
a Christian,” he wrote, “glad lam... without allegiance to any bloc,
party, or groups, except to our Judeo-Christian tradition (modified by
science and common sense).” 19 Over the years he usually closed
such letters with what could serve as a characteristic valedictory:
“God keep you all. . . and help you to grow.” 20

References— from personal correspondence between Carroll Quigley and Carmen Grayson,
1965-1976.

1. April 1, 1965. On Quigley’s writing and the evolution of this manuscript, see the Foreword
by Harry Hogan to “Weapons Systems: A History”.

2. October 6, 1971.

3. Ibid.

4. January 5, 1972.

5. April 13, 1975.

6. January 2, 1975.

7. January 2, 1976; December 4, 1975.

8. December 4, 197 5.

9. January 2, 1976.

10. October 8, 1975.

11. June 28, 1976.

12. May 4, 1976.

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13. November 29, 1973; May 20, 1974.

14. November8, 1973.

15. May 24, 1975.

16. January 10, 1973; December 17, 1972.

17. December 17, 1972.

18. November8, 1973.

19. November 29, 1973.

20. November 7, 1974.

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RECENT OFF-CAMPUS ACTIVITIES OF
PROFESSOR CARROLL QUIGLEY

History Department 16 May 1973

1 7 August 1 972: As one of three original members of the Honorary
Faculty of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Department of
Defense, gave a lecture to about 250 officers at Fort Lesley J. McNair,
on “The American Democratic Tradition”. The lecture will be published
in PERSPECTIVES IN DEFENSE MANAGEMENT in December.

1 2 September 1 972: Gave two lectures to about eighty officers from
the defense forces of Latin American countries at the Inter-American
Defense College, Fort Lesley J. McNair, on the subject “Man in the
Contemporary World”, using a General Systems approach.

19 September 1972: Gave a lecture with subsequent discussion
to the National War College of U.S.A., Fort Lesley J. McNair, on
“Dissention in the United States”, in elaboration of my previous lecture
on the same subject given at ICAF on 24 August 1970 and published in
ICAF’s PERSPECTIVES IN DEFENSE MANAGEMENT of December
1970. This time, however, I used a new General Systems approach.

9 November 1972: Repeated the lecture of 12 May 1972 on
“Cognitive Systems and Cultural Shock” to Wives Seminar, Foreign
Service Institute, U.S. Department of State.

27 November 1972: At invitation of Professor Dorothy Brown, I
lectured to Georgetown University seniors majoring in history on
“Macro-history.”

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5 December 1972: Conducted one session of the week-long seminar
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate School Program on
Critical Issues and Decisions, at Williamsburg, Virginia, Conference
Center, on “Man, Society, and the State”. The participants consisted
of upper-middle level government officials.

27-30 December 1972: Gave three papers at Annual Meeting of
American Association For Advancement of Science, Washington,
D.C., on:

(1) “Cognitive Factors in the Evolution of Civilizations”;

(2) “General Crises in Civilizations”;

(3) “The Civilizational Process: A General Systems Approach”.

The first paper was published immediately in the December 1972

issue of MAIN CURRENTS IN MODERN THOUGHT. The advance
interest in the second paper was so great that the AAAS sent out
ISO copies of the complete paper to news media around the world
in November. As a result of the third paper, I was asked to join the
SOCIETY FOR GENERAL SYSTEMS RESEARCH.

7 March 1973: Participated in a four-speaker, hour-long debate over
radio station KXss, Salt Lake City, on “The Conspiracy Theory of
History”. The discussion was sponsored and moderated by Professor
Philip C. Sturges, chairman, Department of History, University of
Utah; my chief opponent was Gary Allen, author of NONE DARE
CALL IT CONSPIRACY.

10 April 1973: Gave a dinner talk, with subsequent discussion, to 25
executives of American business corporations on the Club of Rome
thesis about “The Limits of Growth”, at Brookings Institution.

11 April 1973: Repeated lecture of 5 December 1972 on “Man,
Society, and the State” at U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate
School, National Press Building, Washington, D.C.

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16 April 1973: Gave a paper on “Can Man Survive at a High Standard
of Living?” at Presidential Plenary Session of Association of American
Geographers Annual: Meeting, held at Hyatt Regency Hotel, Atlanta,
Georgia, before an audience of about 500 persons in main ballroom.

18 April 1973: Spoke to about 80 students and faculty of the GIT
History Majors Association on “The Crisis in the Historical Profession.”

15 May 1973: Gave a lecture on “Cultural Shock and Overseas
Enterprise: Its Nature and Cure” to about 70 executives of the
Overseas Branch of the Pharmaceutical Manufactures Association,
at Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club, Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Spring 1973: Made an evaluation of a sixth grade social science
course, MAN: A COURSE OF STUDY, for Montgomery County,
Maryland, Public Schools. The course, developed by the Educational
Development Center of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with funds
provided by the National Science Foundation, has aroused soma
controversy among parents and citizens of Montgomery County on the
grounds that “The course teaches and promotes secular humanism
and moral relativism.”

5-7 June 1 973: Spoke to students and faculty at three high Schools
of Montgomery County, Maryland, on “The Crisis in United States
Foreign Policy.”

20 August 1973: Spoke to about 47 visiting historians from Great
Britain on “Methodology in Comparative History: the United States
and the United Kingdom”, at Department of State.”

21 August 1973: Dinner followed by ray lecture to the students and
their wives, at Industrial College of the Armed Forces, repeating the
lecture of last year on “The American Democratic Tradition: Myths
and Reality.”

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22 September 1973: Gave a paper on “A General Systems Approach
to Historical Change in Civilizations” to about 1 00 persons at session
of The Middle Atlantic Chapter of The Society for General Systems
Research at University of Maryland, College Park.

1 3 November 1 973” Conducted a seminar for 3 1/2 hours with about
25 government officials on “the Crisis in American life” at U.S.
Department of Labor.

26 November 1973: Conducted a session with the History Senior
Seminar of Georgetown College on “Macrohistory”.

4 December 1973: Repeated the seminar of 13 November on the
American Crisis for U.S. Department of Agriculture Graduate School
at Williams-burg, Virginia to 37 government officials.

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CARROLL QUIGLEY
ENDOWED CHAIR BROCHURE

For forty years Professor Carroll Quigley’s teachings quickened and
disciplined the minds of students of the School of Foreign Service.
His inspired lectures in Development of Civilization, for four decades
and for as many thousands of students, literally defined the School,
their education and themselves.

Professor Quigley’s pedagogy was synonymous with discipline and
with methods of analysis and interpretation. He was justly known -
even reknowned - for his determination to make students think. The
result was not always immediately or fully appreciated (as the next
paragraph recounts!) but no teacher has been more respected by
alumni who daily, in their working lives, progressively discover the
value of a Quigley education.

One day in the Walsh Building a colleague of Professor Quigley’s
saw a sign that said “Jesus Loves You.” Written below the sign was
the following plaint by a student: “If that is true, why did Professor
Quigley give me an F?” Those who recall Dr. Quigley’s lectures on
the providential deity will know that there is no logical inconsistency
between Jesus’s love and a low grade from Professor Quigley!

To say that Professor Carroll Quigley is an institution inseparable
from the School of Foreign Service is to state a fact. His retirement
from full time teaching at the age of 65 in no way diminished this
fact. But it does provide his former students with an opportunity
to contribute to a fund in Professor Quigley’s name. Our goal is a
fund of $500,000 to endow a Carroll Quigley Professorship. This

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Professorship will stand at the center of the School of Foreign Service
as a permanent, inspiring testimony to the legend of this master
teacher.

This fall Professor Carroll Quigley delivered a series of lectures
entitled “Public Authority and the State in the Western Tradition: A
Thousand Years of Growth, 976-1976.” These published lectures,
inscribed by Professor Quigley, will be sent in appreciation to
contributors to the Carroll Quigley Fund.

Peter F. Krogh
Dean, School of Foreign Service

I have known Carroll Quigley as a colleague and friend for three
decades at Georgetown University. His name will be indelibly
identified with the School of Foreign Service, but his presence has
equally enriched the History Department faculty and the University.
It is fitting that an endowed chair should be dedicated in his honor
to commemorate the excellence of his teaching and the many
contributions he has made to keep Georgetown University’s academic
standards high.

Dr. Quigley has always been concerned with the attainment of
quality education at Georgetown and with inspiring in his students
a desire for knowledge. He has not only stimulated the imagination
of his students, but compelled them to think independently, and to
challenge accepted concepts and traditional historical interpretations.
This process sometimes was painful for some students, but many
who were able to take advantage of his teaching techniques and
methodology of approach were grateful for the experience. Most
alumni who look back on their college years at Georgetown and took

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Dr. Quigley’s course in Development of Civilization say they will never
forget him. His influence remains with them, and they recall vividly
how much he taught them.

The key to Carroll Quigley’s success as a teacher and as a scholar
lies in his creative intellect, the depth of his perceptions, and the wide
interdisciplinary range of this interests, which encompasses the fields
of history, economics, philosophy, and science. An iconoclast and a
person of insatiable curiosity, as well as keenness of mind, Dr. Quigley
stands apart from the specialized scholar who plows diligently in the
rutted grooves of narrow disciplines.

What has most disturbed Carroll Quigley is the deterioration that
has occurred in college education. While universities have produced
an ever increasing number of specialists, technicians, scholars, and
researchers in a wide variety of fields, institutions of higher education
have been affected by a philosophical myopia. This has caused a
serious erosion of the highest ideals associated with intellectual
pursuits and professionalism. Throughout his life, Dr. Quigley has
fought against this trend. A chair in Carroll Quigley’s name will stand
for quality education for as long as it is endowed.

Dr. Jules Davids
Professor of Diplomatic History

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LECTURES

THE HOLISTIC, MORPHOLOGICAL, &
COGNITIVE QUALITIES OF
CARROLL QUIGLEY'S HISTORIOGRAPHY

Glenn E. Bugos
Introduction to Historiography
and Historical Method January 12, 1982

There is truth and it can be found; it has been found, to some
degree, by men in the past, and by men in other societies. The task
of finding it is life-long, and probably continues after bodily death. And
the greatest joy of living is the search for it. That is why we are here. 1

Carroll Quigley seldom used terms such as “truth” in his academic
works. Forever scientific, even in his discussions of abstract and
moral concepts, he preferred to use the more easily definable term
“Cognitive sophistication” to explain his educational goals. Quigley
felt that each person had a cognitive system that classifies, critiques,
and prioritizes all the phenomena one encounters, and when one is
able to recognize one’s own unconscious cognitive prejudices by
comparing cognitive systems with the systems of other people in
other times, one is then cognitively sophisticated. Quigley’s goal as
an academician, then, became that of making Western man aware
of his cognitive assumptions by constantly critiquing this cognitive
system from every possible perspective. The all-encompassing nature
of the critique, the necessity of recognizing perspectives, and the
personal force with which “The Great God Quigley” presented his
theory makes his biography an important factor in understanding his
historiography.

Born to an upper-middle class Irish Catholic family in 1911 , Quigley
developed a strong sense of ethnicity and community that greatly
influenced his concepts of community and culture. He showed

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early academic progress at the Boston Latin School and served as
editor for the school’s award winning newspaper. His early interests,
however, were in science and mathematics. When he entered Harvard
University his declared major was biochemistry. His early immersion in
scientific method profoundly influenced his approach to history, which
he adapted as his field of study before graduating magna cum laude
in 1933. He continued his studies in European history at Harvard,
receiving his A.M. in 1934 and his Ph.D in 1938 with a dissertation
on the Risogimento during the Napoleonic era.

His education continued as he presented his historiography in
numerous lectures to students whose critique compelled him to
recognize that his way of looking at the world was “not necessarily the
only way, or even the best way to look at it” 3 . During his three years as
a tutor in history and government at Princeton and Harvard Universities
and his 35 years as a Professor at the Georgetown University School
of Foreign Service, he gained insight into the psychological structure
of modern society and developed a reputation as an outstanding
teacher. His course on “The Development of Civilizations” was cited
by School of Foreign Service Alumni from 1941 to 1969 as the most
influential course in their undergraduate careers and so received
four faculty awards for distinguished teaching 4 . His years of teaching
compelled him not only to constantly reexamine his historiography,
but to produce lectures general in approach, which provided the base
for his two major works, The Evolution of Civilizations and Tragedy
and Hope, thereby facilitating the expression of his generalist history.
By 1971 , he had a very clear idea of where his responsibilities and
curiosity, had led him; “I am a ‘macrohistorian’ specializing in the
processes of change in advanced societies, with a special interest
in methodological questions” 5 .

His generalist approach to history necessitated his keeping abreast
of many academic disciplines, which he did through membership in
the American Anthropological Association, the American Economic
Association, the American Association for the Advancement of

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Science, and the American Historical Association, as well as serving
as a consultant to the Department of Defense and the House Select
Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration. But Quigley’s
interdisciplinary interests resulted not from dilletantism, but from a
distrust of reductionism as a means of understanding society and
an insatiable curiosity he synthesized into a revolutionary holistic
epistemology.

Quigley’s explanations of his historiography changed during the
tumultuous 1960’s as new scientific and psychological concepts
were introduced that aided him in clarifying his definitions. However,
he continued to practice a holistic scientific historiography towards
a moral goal of global peace and understanding through cognitive
sophistication. To understand this unique historiography, one must
first understand its roots in the scientific methodology of what has
come to be known as’ “general systems theory.” Quigley’s wide-
ranging knowledge of numerous civilizations gave him material from
which to discern patterns in the system of evolution of civilizations,
allowing him to extend his general systems theory to “morphological
history”. Then, by critiquing contemporary society in the context of
his morphology of history, Quigley sought to bring about a revolution
in thinking.

Always the teacher, Quigley emphasized the study of tools of
analysis to develop a useful epistemology. In epistemology he always
retained his belief in the scientific method. 6 Quigley’s explanation of
scientific method as an analytical tool in the social sciences is original
with him only in that he recognized the real limitations of the physical
sciences, as opposed to the scientific extremism of Langlois and
Seignobos. The scientific method Quigley subscribed to consists of
gathering evidence, making a hypothesis, and testing the hypothesis.

The laws arising from the use of scientific method in both the
physical and social sciences are idealized theories reflecting observed
phenomena only approximately, but Quigley felt laws must be based
on observation and must be amended to account for any observed

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anomalies. After these laws were scientifically constructed, Quigley
used them as conceptual paradigms to explain historical phenomena
through comparison, in contrast to rationally derived laws of the
theorists which will not adapt to anomalies of observation. “Theory
must agree with phenomena, not vice versa .” 7 Thus, Quigley puts the
historian at ease with scientific methods by explaining that physical
laws have as many exceptions as the historicists claim historical
laws do.

Quigley’s methodology emphasizes observation as a technique
because the inconclusive nature of historical observation makes
any attempt to establish laws as opposed to paradigms, impossible.
He also demanded that the historically “observed” phenomena be
authenticated and verified in a scientific fashion, although in his
sparsely footnoted works he always emphasized the synthesis of
all the observations and not the authenticity of any one fact . 8 As
more evidence is observed, scientists seek “advances by a series
of successive (and one hopes, closer) approximations to the truth.”
Thus, only the communal effort of scholars can achieve the truth.
Observations are then synthesized into hypotheses which must
explain all the observations in the simplest way possible. Simplicity
in the sense that the hypothesis makes the fewest assumptions
and infers the simplest relationships actually makes the hypothesis
scientific. Also, it is simpler to prejudge that a hypothesis is invalid
until proven valid through checking back for evidence, foretelling new
observations, and by experimenting with controls, to complete the
method of propounding tentative paradigms.

Quigley’s quest for simplicity in history did not preclude his recognition
of its complexity. Instead of surrendering to historical complexity as
an insurmountable obstacle and retreating to an historicism that
would obviate the development of paradigms, Quigley confronted
complexity head-on and sought to recognize it as an integral part
of historical method. He realized that while reductionism is possible
with the physical sciences, any such attempt at dissecting an

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historical phenomena and isolating and analyzing only one factor
as an independent variable is impossible in the social sciences.
Thus, Quigley studied the whole context of a phenomena, a method
developed by the theoretical biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy termed
“general systems theory” 10 This “generalism” became known as
“holisticism” and operationalized as “macrohistory.” By “holisticism”,
Quigley meant that the “whole” of reality held greater meaning than
the sum of its parts, thus scholars should tend towards general
studies to understand general and comparative historical concepts
and paradigms rather than the hyperspecialization pervading the
discipline of history . 11

Other generalists Quigley respected were Kenneth Boulding and
Robert Solo in economics, Amitai Etziani in sociology, and William
McNeill, Frederick William Maitland, and Charles Mcllwain in history.
He felt these academicians were top-quality generalists because they
had a clear system of values rooted in the Western Hebreo-Christian
tradition and a sophisticated understanding of epistemology . 12

Here, Quigley shows the profound influence the teachings of the
founders of the Western Hebreo-Christian tradition had on his own
cognitive system. Quigley found the “medieval synthesis” of Occam’s
holism with the moderate realism of Abelard and Thomas Aquinas
as the root of the Western intellectual tradition which triumphed over
the exaggerated rationalism of the Platonists. It was not a complete
triumph, however, and Western epistemology developed with a
moderateness and duality of accepting both rationalism-materialism
and religiosity-holisticism whenever a situation requires a certain
way of thinking . 13

This “medieval synthesis” added two dimensions to the rationalist’s
three-dimensional spacial and materialist configuration of human
experience, the two dimensions of time and of abstraction. Even
this fifth-dimension of time is divisible into chronologically sequential
levels of evolution, namely physical evolution (the materialist, three-
dimensional stage), organic evolution (as the physical elements

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combine for survival), and social evolution (as the organism becomes
more complex as on the level of states, and the society molds the
personality of the individuals within it), which leads to the increasing
sophisticated levels of cognition, the emotional, spiritual, and rational
levels. 14 Man is a consequence of this process of evolution, and
therefore, so is his history.

Quigley believed that as Western man becomes more cognitively
sophisticated and is more able to determine his hierarchy of needs
according to these levels of abstraction, then he will overcome the
exaggerated rationalism of the historical methodology of the 19th
century. In a table prepared for a conference on the philosophy of
history contrasted the catch-words of the historical methodology of
two eras: 15

1880

reductionist

isolation of problem

specialist

analytical

quantification

seeking laws

chain-causation

technicians

knowledge

1980
holist
contextual
generalist
ecological
qualification
making models
network causation
scientists
understanding

Quigley notes the evolution of historical methodology to the more
sophisticated modern approach but would disagree that it is the final,
immutable approach. He feels Western man’s realization that all
present knowledge (in his case of epistemology) will be superceded
in the future and this will save Western society from dissolution or
stagnation from within while allowing innovation for growth. Thus,
Western man’s epistemology, because of its future preference and
scientific deviation, is an important factor in the development, control,

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and future prospects of the powerful Western civilization, just as the
epistemology of past civilizations hindered their ability to cope with
the changing physical world and thus was an important factor in
their demise . 16

But epistemology also played a dominant role in determining several
other aspects of life. As with all of Quigley’s concepts, however,
“epistemology” must be clearly defined before its role in shaping
history can be understood. The operational definition Quigley gives
“epistemology” is “cognitive system” that is, the ways in which “the
language of a society classifies human experience in order to think
or to communicate and the values which a particular society puts
upon these categories, determining the most fundamental engines of
human motivation .” 17 The generic morphology of a cognitive system
consists of those five levels on the continuum of the fifth dimension
of abstraction, that is, feelings, emotions, self-awareness, rationality,
and spirituality.

In his book Tragedy and Hope , Quigley examines the categories and
valuations of human experience along this continuum of abstraction by
man in Western society in order to show how this cognitive system was
a precondition to the economic and military development of Western
society, as well as to the seeds of disintegration it planted which reach
fruition in two world wars sandwiching a global depression. Given
time, Quigley would have investigated the cognitive system of each
civilization in history along this conceptual paradigm exhibited in the
Western system so that we could truly understand that society. This
is because the society’s cognitive system “is the most important we
can know about any society and the most difficult to learn. It is also
difficult to recognize that we ourselves have a cognitive system, a
distinctive way of looking at the world that is not the way the world
actually is, but is simply the way our group conveniently looks at
the world .” 18 Quigley’s recognition that scientific method engenders
a morphology or pattern in which we have always and will always
perceive human experience provides the transition to what he terms

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“historical analysis”, that is, a cognitive system specific to the task
of understanding human experience through historical paradigms.
Whereas scientific methods can provide Western man with an all-
purpose epistemology with which to assess and react to any given
situation, the scientific method when applied to the historians task of
developing historical paradigms is afforded the added sophistication
of the perspective of time (Quigley’s fourth dimension of human
experience), and thus is closer to achieving the true aim of the human
experience, that of understanding human experience.

Quigley believed that general and morphological histories were
necessary to develop the conceptual paradigms to understand
historical phenomena. Quigley believed that every event, every
human experience is unique and “occurs at a certain place, at a
certain moment, to persons at a specific age and condition and in
an arrangement of all these which will never be repeated.” 19 And
to a certain extent, an historical interpretation is unique to a certain
configuration of conditions which bias its findings, such as nationalism-
biased sources in Risorgimento history, or such as academic
specialists who isolate one historical factor as an independent variable
to protect and enhance the worth of their particular discipline.

Quigley felt inexorable accrual of knowledge would obviate belief
in historical relativism. More importantly, Quigley denounced
historians who carried relativism to extremes because he felt they
exaggerated rationalism in regards to scientific method to make it
appear ridiculous . 20

Quigley believed events were unique, but that events form
patterns, which can be perceived, conceptualized, communicated,
and understood, but only to the degree that they are not unique. In
this sense, Quigley is a comparative historian searching not for the
unique character of civilizations, but for resemblances, much like the
historians of medieval Catholicism and Leopold von Ranke who seek
a “Universality” in the past. The most important area of commonality
unique events can share is if they both involve a given society. Events

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that can be examined in the context of a given society give insight
into the life cycle of that society, thus allowing it to serve as an
historical paradigm. For Quigley, a society is more than a well-defined
aggregate of people, rather, it “is a group whose members have
more relationships with one another than they do with outsiders. As
a result, at society forms an integrative unity and is comprehensible.”
21 The unity of interrelationships within this society operationalizes
itself to the historian in the form of culture, or if the interrelationships
make the society a producing and expanding one, then it is also
operationalized in the form of civilization.

Perhaps the single most important factor making Quigley’s historical
analysis more useful than those of other historians who studied
the life-cycle of civilizations, namely Giovanni Battista Vico, Nikolai
Danilevsky, Oswald Spengler, and especially Arnold J. Toynbee, is
that Quigley readily defined his historical concepts and terms. His
definitions of concepts, like Leontief’s Input-Output analysis of a
modern economic system, recognizes that all elements in a general
system are dynamic and that the definition of any element must be
contextual rather than denotative. The earlier historians often saw
Classical antiquity as the prime example of historical culture, society,
and civilization although Quigley shows that it encompasses a number
of anomalies from the historical paradigms he deliniates . 22 Whereas
these historians used simplistic biological and Darwinian terms as
analogies to the life cycles of civilizations, Quigley drew upon his
perhaps more sophisticated understanding of anthropology, sociology
and psychology to deliniate his concepts more clearly.

His definition of “culture” in The Evolution of Civilizations is one such
notable concept. It is a multifaceted definition, stating:

“From one point I view (culture) is the cushion between
man’s purely animal nature and the natural environment.

From another point of view it is the social heritage passed
down from generation to generation. From another
point of view it is a complex medley of personalities,

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material objects, patterns of behavior, subtle emotional
relationships, accepted intellectual ideas and intellectual
assumptions, and customary individual actions. From any
point of view it is constantly changing, and forms the chief
subject of study in all the social sciences.”

To reproduce and survive, societies must act as a buffer between
the human infant and his physical environment and must train that
infant to become a productive and accepting member of that society.
The acculturization during the training process is what transforms the
vast spectrum of his human nature (the sum of his potential qualities)
into the much narrower spectrum of his human personality (actually
developed qualities). Culture would therefore equal artifacts plus
organization into patterns of actions, feelings, and thoughts among
persons and artifacts. Thus, while a basic human need is food, it is
the culture that determines beef and broccoli are foods as opposed
to locusts and seaweed. This added influencing dimension of culture
on the human personality differentiates man from beasts, who have
only their natural environment to shape their personality because they
can survive without culture. Quigley, with his scientist’s passion for
diagrams, displayed the human interrelationship as follows:

The hereditary aspect of culture makes it “integrative” which means
that the different parts of a culture adapt themselves to one another
and tend to become an increasingly interlocking unified system in

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which each part fits snugly into all the surrounding parts. But because
culture is made up of loose-fitting parts that are only partially adapted
to one another, and to the adjacent influence of the environment and
human needs, it is both adaptive and persistent and thus serves as a
trigger mechanism to keep the three circles operating in coordination.

In this model of interrelationships, human nature certainly shapes
the culture but in a very nebulous manner which social scientists have
difficulty observing. They can more easily observe how the culture
shapes human potentialities into human personality. While Quigley
deliniates the generic factors comprising human personality along
his five level continuum of abstraction, the most important are those
one thinking on the “rational” level should consider. This division of
human needs into a hierarchy of levels from the more abstract to the
more concrete parallels the division of the elements of culture and
are here presented with their operational definition : 25

8 Intellectual Rational Explanations and Communication
7 Religious Psychic Certainty

6 Emotional Existential Relation with Nature and People
5 Social Gregariousness

4 Economic Energy, Materials

3 Political Domestic Tranquility

2 Military Foreign Security

1 Physical Space, time, oxygen

Internal Controls

External Controls

Quigley considers the fulfillment of these factors a similarity shared
by all civilizations and thus important to discerning historical patterns.
To the degree that a civilization is able to fulfill these fundamental
needs, it is able to exert control over the people that comprise the
society, either through controls of acculturization internalized in the
psyche of the individuals which comprise that civilization, or more
concrete controls, such as economic and military leverage, which
are external to the individuals in a civilization and imposed upon

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them through some societal process located in another level of the
culture. This is known as morphological tension. For instance, a
change on the intellectual level exacerbating the separation of man
from nature on the emotional level could lead to that culture’s inability
to satisfy needs on the physical level if this culture has the economic
infrastructure to manifest that change which started on the intellectual
level. Thus, Quigley showed that cultures satisfy human needs by
socializing them into human desires along a complex nexus of societal
(and historical) factors.

This description of culture by its functions is more than a temporalized
physiocracy expounding needs as the driving force in history; indeed
the needs a culture must satisfy, with the exception of those on the
physical level, result primarily from the culture’s cognitive system.
Nevertheless, Quigley’s major contribution to historiography was in
his analysis of the evolution of civilizations, and in this analysis he
determined that the culture’s ability to create needs it can fulfill is the
primary factor transforming that culture into a civilization. Quigley
defines “civilization” as “a producing society with an instrument of
expansion .” 26 Seventeen societies meet this definition of civilization,
including the two currently existing Western and Orthodox (Russian)
civilizations. Each of these civilizations had a unique culture and a
surplus producing instrument of expansion.

The earliest civilizations depended on their proficiency in growing a
carbohydrate plant as an energy food and they can be classified into
the maize, rice, and grain groups. However, this dependency is only
part of the spatial dimensions, which along with time and abstraction,
comprise the matrix on which all civilizations are found. Quigley saw
the matrix of early civilizations influenced primarily by geographical
and meteorological changes in man’s prehistory. The demographic
flows and agricultural systems resulting from these changes found
the matrix of subsequent civilizations, although the evolution of the
instrument of expansion makes the civilization historically unique.

Quigley defines the spatial dimensions of the matrix of civilization in

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terms of geography, the abstract dimension as the cognitive system
embodied in culture, and the dimension of time in terms of continua
of phenomena. Quigley shares Marc Bloch’s fascination with time as
that perspective which makes history a unique and fruitful discipline.

Quigley’s continuum in the context of history is:

“a heterogeneous unity each point of which differs from all
the surrounding points but differs from them by such subtle
gradations in any one respect that no boundaries exist
in the unity itself, and it can be divided into parts only by
imaginary and arbitrary boundaries .” 27

He uses the example of the colors on the prism to explain the
irrational quality of space; orange is not a single, definable color on
the prism but rather the gamut of colors between red and yellow.
Because only a rational and logical construct of the spectrum could
produce colors that are both perfectly definable and commensurable,
Quigley denounces attempts to use mathematical rationalism to
determine the periodizations of historical paradigms. But history deals
with changes and all changes, occurring in time, involve continua.
Thus, the practice of slicing continua into periods or dual poles and
giving names to these artificial categories is necessary if one is to
think or talk about the world. However, one must always remain alert
to the danger of believing that those terms are real or refer to reality
except by rough approximation. But “only by making such divisions
can we deal in a rational way with the many non-rational aspects of
the world .” 28 And Quigley sought to elucidate as many divisions as
necessary by approximating dates for all relevant phenomena and
transitionary periods.

Thus, added to the five-dimensional continuum of human experience
and the eight-leveled continuum of human needs and cultural tasks,
is a seven-stage civilization life cycle along a continuum of time.
To comprehend this continuum, “the periodization should, ideally,
depend on the causes of the cultural changes .” 29 Whereas Toynbee,
Spengler, and Vico saw change resulting from Darwinian strife,

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Quigley sought to understand the patterns in the conditions causing
the strife. Quigley saw the strife occurring at the point where a social
instrument becomes an institution and fails to respond adequately to
societal needs. An instrument is a social organization that is fulfilling
effectively the purpose for which it arose, to satisfy one of the eight
basic human needs of the individuals in the society. An institution
is an instrument that has taken on activities and purposes of its
own, separate from and different from the purposes for which it was
intended, and as a consequence it achieves its original purposes with
decreasing effectiveness. That is, in an institution the organizational
relationships become ends in themselves to the detriment of the
ends of the whole organization. Quigley clarifies the evolutionary
process leading inexorably to tension as the aggregate of the process
transforming instruments into institutions, a process pervading
all social phenomena . 30 As human needs are left unsatisfied by
institutionalization struggle ensues between a group of discontents
seeking to overthrow the institution and a vested-interest group
seeking to continue benefitting from the institutionalization. This
struggle is called the “tension of development” and from this tension
and its ensuing controversy there may emerge any one of (or
combination) among three possible outcomes: reform, in which the
institution is reorganized and its methods of action are changed to
become more of an instrument; circumvention, in which the institution
is left with its privileges and vested interests intact, but its duties are
taken away and assigned to a new instrument in society; or reaction,
in which the vested interests triumph and the people of that society
are doomed to ineffective achievement of their needs on that level for
an indefinite period. Thus, historical development is concerned with
the changes that take place on any single level of culture in a society.

This process of historical development takes place on innumerable
levels of a society because there are innumerable levels to the culture.
But “historical evolution” results from both historical development and
“historical morphology”, both acting simultaneously and reacting on

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each other. “Historical morphology” is concerned with the structures
and the relationships between the different levels of society. Because
of these structural interrelationship between the levels of the culture,
there is an optimum point of historical development on each level of
culture. When each level in relationship to the development of each
other level is at the optimum point where morphological tension
between the levels is minimal, then that society is responding to needs
with the most efficient resource expenditure. Having established that
the evolution of a society is a resultant of the two kinds of change
termed development and morphology, Quigley can then concentrate
on the historical evolution of a certain type of society, the civilization.

The pattern of change in civilizations Quigley presents consists of
seven stages resulting from the fact that each civilization needs an
instrument of expansion, which becomes an institution. The civilization
rises while this organization is an instrument and declines as this
organization becomes an institution. By “instrument of expansion”,
Quigley means that the society must be organized in such fashion
that it engenders the three essential factors of “incentive to invest,
accumulation of surplus, and application of this surplus to the new
inventions.” 31 The most important organization is that for capital
accumulation which serves as the surplus-creating instrument,
although there is not expansion unless the elements of invention and
investment are also present. This surplus-creating instrument need
not be economic organization, but can be a religious organization such
as the tribute collecting Sumerian priesthood in the Mesopotamian
civilization, a political organization such as the Egyptian state which
collected taxes, or a social organization such as slavery in the
Classical Age. Quigley, of course, finds many sources of capital
accumulation in any society, a result of society’s complexity, but there
is generally only one of significance.

Like all instruments, an instrument of expansion in the course of time
becomes an institution and the rate of expansion slows down. Though
this processes of institutionalization is much more detrimental, it is

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the same as the institutionalization of any instrument, and appears
specifically as a breakdown of one of the three necessary elements
of production, usually in a decrease of the rate of investment. This
decrease in the rate of investment occurs chiefly because the social
group controlling the surplus ceases to apply it to new ways of doing
things because they have a vested interest in the old way of doing
things. Moreover, by a natural and unconscious self-indulgence,
they begin to apply the surplus they control to non-productive but
ego-satisfying purposes. When discussing the manners in which
the vested interests prevent the fulfillment of human needs in a
society, Quigley writes without the sobriety characteristic of most of
his exposition. His scathing attacks on “the Establishment” in Tragedy
and Hope made him the darling of John Birchers in America who saw
him as “the Joseph Valachi of political conspiracy,” 32 And though
he stated “I generally think that any conspiracy theory of history is
nonsense ” 33 the vehemence with which he blames the establishment
for America’s energy crisis 34 and financial problems among other
things indicates that he considers them a powerful opponent blocking
progress in contemporary western society. This stage of conflict,
while clearly the most important, is only one of the seven stages of
evolution for a society.

This process of the institutionalization of an instrument of expansion
allows the understanding of why civilizations rise and fall by permitting
the division of the process into seven stages. These stages are Mixture,
Gestation, Expansion, Age of Conflict, Universal Empire, Decay,
and Invasion . 35 Quigley’s historiographical work on conceptualizing
change in civilization is operationalized by examining a civilization
through its correlation with this paradigm of seven stages.

Every society begins with the mixture of two or more cultures along
their shared borders. But such casual cultural mixture is of little
significance unless there comes into existence in the zone of mixture a
new culture, arising from the mixture but different from the constituent
parts. Also since cultural mixture occurs on the borders of societies,

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civilizations rarely succeed one another, but undergo a displacement
in space. But more importantly, this new society undergoes a
displacement of culture that necessitates it making choices on how
to fulfill its needs free from the acculturization process of their original
societies. The specific choices they make are unimportant so long
as they are morphologically compatible to give rise to social custom
and so long as enough members of the society subscribe to them.
What is important is that if these choices can engender the necessary
elements of an instrument of expansion in the formulative stage of
gestation, that society can evolve into a civilization.

The next stage of a civilization is the exercise of its instrument
of expansion through increased production of goods, increase in
population of the society, increase in the geographic extent of the
civilization, and in increase in knowledge, all of which comprise the
Stage of Expansion. It is generally a period of vigorous change in
political order and science. As the vigor promoting growth through the
instrument of expansion in the society diffuses from the core area to
the peripheral area of the society, the rate of expansion in the core
area slows and it enters the Age of Conflict. This age is marked by
growing tension of evolution and class conflicts, increasingly frequent
and increasingly violent imperialist wars, and growing irrationality,
pessimism, superstition, and other-worldliness. It is also marked by a
shift from intensive expansion, that is by producing more goods with
fewer resources but by better organization, to extensive expansion
to satisfy increasing desires by using more resources with the same
organization.

At this point the institution comes under attack by dissidents seeking
reformation or circumvention to rejuvenate their instruments, which
has seldom worked. The clearest case to be found is the evolution of
our Western civilization where both reform and circumvention have
occurred. As a result, Western civilization has had three periods of
expansion, the first about 970-1270, the second about 1420-1650,
and the third about 1725-1929. The instrument of expansion in the

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first was feudalism, which became institutionalized into chivalry.
This was circumvented by a new instrument of expansion Quigley
calls “commercial capitalism.” When this organization became
institutionalized into mercantilism, it was reformed into industrial
capitalism, which became the instrument of expansion of the third age
of expansion. By 1930 this organization had become institutionalized
into monopoly capitalism, and the society was, for the third time, in
a major era of crisis. 36

As long a Western society is able to invigorate one instrument of
expansion through reform or circumvention, it can remain viable.
However, Quigley is not optimistic on our prospects of reform because
of the nature of revolution as essentially a collision between power
and law, the law supporting the numerous vested interests on all
levels. These are challenged when some event suddenly crystallizes
previously dispersed and disorganized discontents into a structure of
power determined to a change obsolescent laws which are obstructing
the satisfaction of needs. Success by the reformers depends on
their ability to organize new organizational structures on all levels,
structures which the population will recognize as instruments able to
satisfy real needs, while “the success of the counter-revolutionary side
depends on its success in persuading the people that their desires
are true reflections of their needs and are to be identified with the
existing structure of the vested interests.” 37

Quigley found the vested interests in contemporary society very
strong. Thus, Quigley argued that:

“If Western Civilization reforms and again passes into
Stage 3, it will be far too powerful to be defeated by
Russian civilization; if Western Civilization does not reform,
but continues through the Stage of Conflict into the Stage
of Universal Empire, the threat fro A Russian civilization will
be much greater.” 38

This stage of Universal Empire is characterized by a single dominant
political unit which stifles minor reforms of the other levels of society,

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thus making the society even less able to respond to the needs of its
individuals. Even though this stage appears to be a period of relative
peace and prosperity, it is illusionary and hides latent civil war and
economic depression, which will reach fruition in the Stage of Decay.
In the final stage, the Stage of Invasion, the civilization is no longer
willing or able to defend itself and thus succumbs to outsiders from
another younger civilization.

The seven stages thus presented are a convenient way of dividing
a complex historical process, but this process is not relentlessly
deterministic at all points but merely at some points, in the sense that
men have power and free will but their actions have consequences
nevertheless. Thus this historiography of morphological civilizations,
which Quigley explores in many historical paradigms still places
primary emphasis on cognition, a factor that above all others, man
must understand.

The historical paradigms Quigley develops serve as the historian’s
cognitive system, much like any individual would use or misuse his
general cognitive system; “Instead of dealing with life, we deal with
our structuring of it.” 39 Once the structure of the cognitive system
is understood, as Quigley understood it, the resulting objectivity in
methodology allows one to remain cognitive in assessing any human
experiences.

Quigley believed his historical methodology was applicable to other
academic disciplines, which he attempted to do in a number of articles.

One of the more controversial was his article on “Assumption and
Inference on Human Origins” in which he challenged anthropologists
to reappraise their sacrosanct paradigms on human origins, including
the Darwinian construct of evolution resulting from materialist struggle:
“The paradigms of the 19th century methods were
analytical, isolating, quantitative, materialistic, objective,
dualistic, etc. With these, great achievements were made,
especially in the extension of factual knowledge and
human powers. But this positivist, analytical method is now

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approaching marginal effectiveness, a condition in which
relatively minor accretions of benefits will require gigantic
allotments of resources.” 40

What he calls for is a dissolution of the consensus on materialist
evolutionism by default of sufficient evidence on other hypotheses
and a reappraisal of the basic cognitive assumptions on which this
hypothesis is based. Quigley contends that the idea that man without
artifacts is not human or that human relationships must take place
through artifacts is the kind of dehumanized point of view against
which the 20th century is in growing revolt; “The care of one person
for another, leading to what Montagu has the courage to call ‘love’, is
not only a reality of human experience but undoubtably a significant
factor in human origins and human evolution.” 41 Quigley’s article was
not intended as a general decrial of anthropology, as evidence in his
remark that his professional work has rested primarily on an effort to
apply anthropological methods to history. But he wished to compliment
the holistic, comparative, and conceptualizing techniques prevalent
in anthropology with the historian’s perspective on the dimension of
time and the processes of chronological change. 42

A second such applied methodology article is “Our Ecological Crisis”
in which he contends that “...the historical roots of our ecological crisis
must be sought in the history of how our present attitudes towards
nature and our fellow men came into existence.” 43

He begins the article with detailed definitions or degrees of
“environmental pollution” as “the movement of objects by human action
from places or conditions where they are natural or unobjectionable
to places or conditions where they are unnatural, objectionable, and
injurious.” 44

These detailed definitions exemplify Quigley’s technique of
extracting conceptual paradigms and then reenforcing or qualifying
them with historical examples. After thus assessing and defining this
contemporary phenomena, Quigley operationalizes it by asking “Why
does our technology take such ecologically disruptive or destructive

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directions?” 45 a question stated in such a way as to avoid common
assumptions and inferences. He then conceptualizes on how he will
seek the historical roots of the crisis by stating that primary concerns
are:

“...organizational questions, the patterns of behavior in
our society which form it into a functioning social system,
together with our technology on one side (determining
what we can do) and our outlook and value system on the
other side (determining what we will want to do)... Thus
Outlook acts on Organizations which handle Technology
against the Natural Environment.... This means: 1) that the
causes and the remedies of our ecological crisis must be
sought in changes in outlook; and 2) that changes in our
technology and even in our organizational arrangements
are at best, concerned with systems rather than with
causes.” 46

It would perhaps come as no surprise to readers acquainted with
Quigley that his historical analysis of the roots of the ecological
crisis finds fault in the separation of man from nature by culture,
Greek dualism, and the secularization of future preference, and the
remedy in medieval Christian pantheism translated into contemporary
ecological holism. But still his argument is compelling perhaps
as much because of its structural simplicity as for the force of its
historical examples. Quigley also uses this approach successfully
on such diverse issues as American foreign policy, energy, African
decolonization, and contemporary youth dissent, as well as in Tragedy
and Hope.

A third example of his application of methodology is in his few
attempts at foretelling new observations. Although Quigley was
uncomfortable with predicting the future, he took the opportunity
when reviewing Victor Ferkiss’s book on The Future of Technological
Civilization, to foretell the benefits or detriments of American society
to reform itself along the lines he and Ferkiss present. 47

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Of much greater importance, however, is the work Quigley did
as a consultant to the Department of Defense for many years on
the development of weapons systems much of which is currently
unavailable. Quigley recognized the military as an agent capable
of effecting drastic change in society and thus it must be made
compatible with the goals and existing structure of that society.
Because of the lengthy lead time in developing weaponry systems,
Quigley had to project the optimum weapon system by assessing
how past civilizations influenced their weapons systems, how future
civilizations will resemble past civilizations, the sociological impacts
of past weapons systems, and the technological capabilities of future
systems. Such a study exemplified the dynamic interrelationships
among all factors in a certain aspect of civilization . 48

Quigley clearly felt a proliferation of his cognitive insight into such
diverse disciplines would bring about the change in outlook that could
reform Western society. He felt our society has now largely lost its
basic distinction between necessary and important, in which material
things were necessary but spiritual things important. It is difficult to
reform our old methods of thinking no matter how bankrupt they may
be because standing in the way of reform are the pressures exerted
by institutionalized establishments, the profits of powerful groups
producing equipment based on old ways of thinking, the specialized
scholars protecting their topic, and the need of bureauacratized
organizations for persons with the narrow technical training of the
older cognitive patterns. Because of this strong reaction by the vested
interests, Quigley studied and sought to reform and strengthen the
revolutionary tendencies of his students.

Quigley taught the historical methods he felt were the first step
towards reform of the old methods of thinking. He told his students
that he was trying to train executives rather than clerks, the distinction
between the two being the distinction made between understanding
and knowledge . 49 His forceful and wide-ranging lectures attacked the
assumptions his students had perhaps never questioned.

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Quigley intended these disquieting lectures to provide the cultural
shock which leads to cognitive sophistication, which:

“makes it possible to know both one’s own cognitive
system and that of any different group with which one
works so that one may be able to translate both talk
and action from one such system into the other, while
recognizing the conventional and arbitrary nature of both.”

Any executive capable of using his vocabulary of talk and action with
such cognitive sophistication is capable of understanding many things.
While reflecting on the precarious position of our contemporary society
coping with its third Age of Conflict, Quigley noted that “civilization
is the race between education and catastrophe.” Quigley, with his
perceptive insight into our cognitive system, invaluably advanced
the cause of education.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works by Carroll Quigley:

• “America’s Future in Energy.” Current History. 69 (July 1975): 1-5.

• “Assumption and Inference on Human Origins.” Current
Anthropology. 12. (October-December 1971): 519-540.

• “Cognitive Factors in the Evolution of Civilizations.” Main Currents
in Modern Thought. 29 (November-December 1972): 69-75.

• “The Creative Writer Today.” Catholic World. 206 (December

1967) : 111-117.

• “The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical
Analysis”. Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979.

• “Falsification of a Source in Risorgimenta History.” Journal of
Modern History. 20 (September 1948): 223-26.

• “Letter to the Editor.” Washington Post, 26 October 1974.

• “Major Problems of Foreign Policy.” Current History. 55 (October

1968) : 199-206.

• “Needed: A Revolution in Thinking.” National Education
Association Journal. 57 (May 1968): 8-10.

• “Public Authority and the State in the Western Tradition: A
Thousand Years of Growth, 976-1 976.” The Oscar Iden Lectures.
Washington: School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University,
1977.

• “The Search for a Solution to the World Crisis.” Futurist. 9 (March
1975): 38-41.

• “Our Ecological Crisis.” Current History. 59 (July 1970): 1-12.

• Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1966.

• Washington, D. C. Georgetown University Special Collections.
Carroll Quigley Papers.

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REFERENCES

1 . Carroll Quigley, “Education and the Academic Process,” memorandum to the
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Dean’s Office, 1971, p. 3.

2. Quigley, “Letter to the Editor”, Washington Post, October 26, 1974.

3. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1966), p. xi.

4. Obituary of Carroll Quigley, Washington Star, January 6, 1977.

5. Quigley, “Assumption and Inference on Human Origins”, Current Anthropology 12
(October-December 1971): 536.

6. Quigley, The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis
(Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979), p. 33.

7. Quigley, “Assumption and Inference on Human Origins”, 538.

8. Quigley, “Falsification of a Source in Risorgimento History,” Journal of Modern
History 20 (September 1948): 223-26.

9. Quigley, Evolution of Civilizations, p. 34.

1 0. Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory: Foundations, Development,
Applications (New York: George Braziller, 1968).

1 1 . Quigley, “Public Authority and the State in the Western Tradition: A Thousand Years
of Growth, 976-1976, The Oscar Iden Lectures (Washington: Georgetown University
School of Foreign Service, 1977), p. 1.

12. An unpublished article for the Georgeqvy/5\n University Hoya, ca. 1972, p. 4.

1 3. Quigley, Evolution of Civilizations, p. 346.

14. Ibid.

1 5. Quigley, “Structuring History” (1971) mimeographed.

1 6. Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 1233.

1 7. Quigley, “The Creative Writer Today,” Catholic World 206 (December 1967): HI-
112 .

1 8. Quigley, “Needed: A Revolution in Thinking,” National Education Association Journal
57 (May 1968): 42.

19. Ibid.

20. Quigley, Evolution of Civilizations, p. 296.

21. Ibid.

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22. Ibid., p. 131.

23. Ibid., pp. 59-60.

24. Ibid., p. 64

25. Quigley, Notes to Papers Presented at American Association for the Advancement
of Science Meeting? Washington, D. C, 1972.

26. Quigley, Evolution of Civilizations, p. 142.

27. Ibid., p. 95.

28. Ibid., p. 98.

29. Ibid., p. 128.

30. bid., p. 115.

31. Ibid., p. 132.

32. Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy (Rossmoor, Ca: Concord Press, 1971), p.
22-3.

33. “The Professor Who Knew Too Much” Potomac magazine, The Washington Post, 23
March 1975, pp. 17.

34. Quigley, “America's Future in Energy.” Current Hi story.69 (July 1975): 1-5. 25

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., pp. 348-414.

37. Quigley, “The Structure of Revolutions, With Applications to the French Revolution,”
pp. 14-15.

38. Quigley, Evolution of Civilizations, p. 166.

39. Quigley, “Lecture to Inter-American Defense Council,” (Washington, 1973), p. 6.

40. Quigley, “Assumption and Inference,” p. 536.

41 . “Falsification of a Source in Risorgimenta History.” Journal of Modern History 20
(September 1948): 223-26.

42. Ibid. p. 536.

43. Quigley, “Our Ecological Crisis,” Current History 59 (July 1970): 1

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., p. 4.

46. Ibid.

47. Quigley, “The Search for a Solution to the World Crisis, “The Futurist” 9 (March
1975): 3841.

48. Quigley, “A Historical Projection of Tomorrow’s World” prepared for the Sea-Based

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Deterrence Summer Study-Panel 1, 1964, pp. 1-23.

49. Ibid., p. 420

50. Quigley, “Needed: A Revolution in Thinking,” p. 42.

51 . Untitled, unpublished article for Georgetown Hoya, p. 6.

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COMPARATIVE NATIONAL CULTURES

Address given on November 13, 1957, at The Industrial College of the Armed
Forces and later published as iCAF Publication No. L58-54.

INTRODUCTION

Colonel T. L. Crystal, Jr., USAF,

Member of the Faculty, ICAF

SPEAKER

Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor of History,

School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.

INTRODUCTION

Dr. Carroll Quigley, Professor of History, School of Foreign Service,
Georgetown University, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, 9
November 1910. He was educated at Boston Latin School and at
Harvard University, obtaining an A.B. (magna cum laude) in 1933, an
M.A. in 1 934 and a Ph.D. in 1 938. He was an instructor in History at
Princeton University from 1935 to 1937, leaving there to do research
work at the public archives of Paris and Milan on the Woodberry
Lowery Traveling Fellowship of Harvard University. While abroad
he wrote his doctoral dissertation on “The Public Administration of
the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, 1805-1814.” From 1938 to 1941
he was instructor and tutor in the Division of History, Government
and Economics at Harvard University. Since 1941 he has been at
the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, first as
lecturer in History and Civilization and now as Professor of European
History. He is regarded as an authority on the comparative history of
civilizations and the history of Europe in the 20th century.

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He is a member of the American Historical Association, the American
Economic Association, the American Anthropological Association, and
other learned societies. He is engaged at present in writing a book on
world history in the 20th century Europe. His most recent published
work is “The Origin and Diffusion of Oculi” in The American Neptune
for January 1958. This is Dr, Quigley’s fifth lecture at the College.

COMPARATIVE NATIONAL CULTURES

13 November 1957

COLONEL CRYSTAL: Good morning.

We have the privilege this morning of welcoming back to this platform
a friend of long standing. Until I met the Doctor this morning, I really
was going to say “an old friend,” because anybody who has done
as much for as long a period as Dr. Quigley has for the Industrial
College, I felt, must have a long gray beard. But in this age of DDT
and penicillin he has preserved his facilities remarkably well.

I’d like to tell you a little bit about what his business is. He is a
professional historian at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown
University. One of the methods they use there is to help the student
to form an idea of the process of social development by obtaining a
broader perspective and understanding of the past of our civilization,
the meaning of great movements in the past, with special emphasis
on their effects on our present civilization. And he has been trying to
do this for some years with us.

Evidence of it is contained in some of the documents which have
been published by us and to which I strongly recommend you: The
pre-Revolutionary History of the Soviet Union, a brilliant presentation
that lets you understand a little better where the Muscovites came

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from; The Development of the Soviet Economy — his lecture on
this subject last year — and finally, and to me as a student, of even
greater importance, is his bibliography on the economic potential of
the Soviet Union and its satellites.

I’ll give you one example of how a professional teacher helps
students, because in an area which is difficult to find much about,
labor in the Soviet Union, he has listed Deutscher, I., Soviet Trade
Unions: Their Place in Soviet Labor Policy, an I.R.R.A. publication,
and Hubbard, L. E., Soviet Labour and Industry. So in your research
in this course of human resources don’t neglect what the Doctor has
already made available to us in our library.

He has also annotated it with critical comments on the biases of
the authors, and this is that understanding perspective about which
professional historians probably know more than most people in other
areas of dispute and contention. History is one of those areas. In his
biography you’ve probably read his latest contribution to scholarly
work. I’ve not made arrangements with the magazine to get a specially
reduced rate on the American Neptune for January, because I am
one of those who is rather perplexed at exactly what the Origin
and Diffusion of Oculi means. If any of you share my confusion, I
want to admit that the amount of lexicographical research that I did
last night only heightens my confusion, because I found the word
“oculus”to mean, anatomically, an eye. In architecture, it’s a circular
hole in the middle of the western facade of most Gothic cathedrals.
It is also the circular hole in the top of the dome of the Pantheon. In
an astronomical manner it’s the Corona Borealis. In botany it is a
leafbud or an astringent plant. In chronology it’s the third Sunday in
Lent. In lapidology it’s an opal, the oculus mundi. In zoology it can
be called the crab’s eye.

Well, without further ado, Doctor, you know you’re among friends.
We’re very happy to have you here. I am proud to present to the

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class Dr. Carroll Quigley.

DR. QUIGLEY: I think it’s a shame to interrupt that. He speaks very
well, and it’s the most fascinating subject I’ve ever heard discussed.
But he’s not a good man with the dictionary. I guess he didn’t get
the right dictionary.

The oculi I am talking about are the eyes painted on the front of
ships in Asia and the East Coast of Africa. They have eyes painted
so the ship can see where it is going, according to some people. One
of the arguments in my article is that it is not to provide the ship with
a way of seeing where it’s going, but something else. But don’t rush
out and buy the American Neptune, because they’ll run out. I don’t
think they publish more than a handful of them.

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PART 1

Today I’m going to speak about the cultural development of two
great areas. I don’t expect to give you much new information. What,
rather, I’d like to do is to define rather sharply some of the information
you may have and above all to show the relationship between things
that you already know.

I want to begin by pointing out that we have a world today consisting
of three great parts. At the center is the Soviet bloc. Around that is
the fringe of shattered cultures which I call the buffer fringe, running
from the Islamic countries in the west through Afghanistan, India,
Burma, and the rest of them to eastern Asia. I call that the buffer
fringe. Outside of that we have our own Western bloc. Today I’m
going to say nothing at all about the Soviet bloc except that I will
say something about China, dealing with it as if it were a part of the
buffer fringe, because as a historian I am always a decade or even
centuries behind the times, and I’ll be talking about China as it was
a generation or more than a generation ago.

I’ll speak, then, only of the buffer fringe and of our own Western
civilization. What I’m going to do, very simply, is go through a series
of developments in the order in which they appeared in our own
Western civilization. Then I will examine the order in which these
developments occurred in the buffer fringe and show you how the
difference in order of occurrence is of major significance in creating
the problems of the buffer fringe area.

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and eMuiHUALeiJien*

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fl. W**kl?b

On the left of Table 1 is shown the order in which they occurred in
our civilization. When I speak of “our Western civilization” I am talking
about that area of the globe which runs from Poland westward to New
Zealand. The civilization that I have reference to, our own Western
civilization, began about 550 A. D.; and thus it has existed for almost
a thousand years and a half.

Now, the first occurrence in Western civilization, the first great
development, is our ideology. It’s something I could speak about
endlessly, as you know. But I want simply to refer to certain basic
things in the outlook of Western ideology, particularly in the first 1 ,000
years of its existence, because that 1 ,000 years of Western ideology
became the foundation for many of these later developments.

When I speak of Western ideology I refer specifically to religion —
Christianity — to such things as the scientific outlook; and to a third
thing, which I will call the liberal outlook. It may not be clear to you as
I speak, because in all of this I am oversimplifying most drastically; I
hope you will understand that. But it would seem to me that there is
a common element to all three of these — the Christian outlook, the
scientific outlook, and the liberal outlook — and to sum it up, rather

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briefly the outlook is this:

All three believe that there is a truth somewhere. They all believe that
it is worthwhile seeking that truth. They all believe that the process
by which we seek that truth is a process in which we approach it in
time; that is, truth is something which unfolds in time. Therefore we
must constantly work and strive and discuss in order to get closer
and closer and closer to the truth, which we perhaps never reach.
This is why scientists don’t stop work today in the smug idea that
they have the truth; but they have to go on struggling, because what
they have today is simply an approximation of the truth.

Another characteristic of all three of these is that the unfolding of
truth in time results from a cooperative effort. That is, it’s a social
effort. It arises from discussion, criticism, and so forth; and from that
emerges a kind of consensus, which is closer to the truth than would
be the point of view of any single individual. So thus we have that
there is a truth. This is not a skeptical outlook. It is not a dogmatic
outlook because nobody now has the truth. It puts great emphasis
on chronological development. It puts great emphasis upon social
cooperation. Some of this may not seem convincing to you, and I
imagine that the field in which it will not seem convincing is perhaps
the field of religion. But the Christian religion basically does have
this outlook.

It believes that religious truth has been unfolded in time. That is,
we had a whole series of revelations and prophets. We have the
Old Testament, that was not replaced but supplemented by the New
Testament, and the New Testament has been interpreted and unfolded
in the course of time to reveal additional truth. And the process of
religious appreciation still goes on. Am I right?

Now, one other thing that I should emphasize about the Western

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ideology and particularly the Christian ideology is this: It is not a
dualistic ideology. This is a point which many people, I think,
misunderstand, because there has been a tendency, at least in the
last 500 years, for the Christian or religious outlook to be dualistic.
By that I mean that they oppose the material world to the spiritual
world. But this was not fundamentally the point of view of the religious
outlook of Western civilization for at least the first 1 ,000 years. During
the first 1 ,000 years, they recognized the basic necessity of the
material world. I could point this out in a number of ways. They made
a distinction between what was necessary and what was important.
Material things were necessary; spiritual things were important. But
you could not achieve spiritual things except by working through the
material world.

The Christians felt, for example, that we could not be saved except
for the fact that God became man in a real body living in this world.
We cannot be saved unless we supplement God’s grace with good
works in this world. So that the religious outlook is social. It is also
materialistic. And in the first church council in 325, the Council of
Nicaea, where the creed was first stated, they said most explicitly that
they believed in the resurrection of the body, indicating their point of
view, which is the really basic Christian point of view, that the body
is not an evil or bad thing, but is indeed a good thing, made in the
image and likeness of God, and a thing which is necessary to our
salvation, because only with a body can we do good things to our
neighbors in this world.

I have perhaps said too much about that, but the reason I’m
emphasizing it is this: I feel very strongly that this point of view, which
I am trying to describe here, which I will call the Western outlook,
and which, as I showed you, appeared in religion, in the scientific
outlook, and, I am sure you understand, in liberalism believes there is
a truth, which can be reached by discussion, as a social achievement.

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Therefore there must be freedom of speech, freedom of discussion,
and these other things, no one has the truth. Therefore no one has
the right to impose his “truth” upon others. Rather, as we talk around
the truth, each of us gets a fragment of it; and by contributing our
fragment to a common discussion, we will get a truth which is closer
to the ultimate truth than would be the point of view of any one of
us. Now, this, it seems to me, this outlook, is the real explanation of
why Western civilization has been so prosperous, so wealthy, and so
powerful — because it has been the most wealthy and most powerful
civilization that ever existed.

Now, I wish to go on to the next thing. But I must, before I speak of
the commercial revolution, indicate the basic structure upon which the
commercial revolution was imposed. That basic structure you must
be familiar with, I am sure. In the Middle Ages, about the year 1000,
Western Europe was organized in a series of self-contained, self-
sufficient economic units. We call them manors. Each manor tried to
produce everything it needed, and over it was a fighting man, a knight.

The serfs on the manor did no fighting, and were not really expected
to be fighters; but they produced goods from the soil. The feudal lords,
on the other hand, were fighting specialists and were never expected
to till the soil. Thus you got a rigid class structure of an upper class, 2
percent of the population, the feudal knights; and a lower class, the
serfs, perhaps 97 percent of the population. The other odd percent
is going to the clergy, who were really to a certain extent part of the
upper class or part of the lower class depending upon whether they
were upper clergy or lower clergy. This system was a system of a
rigid class structure and above all with economic self-sufficiency
of the unit. A manor was a self-sufficient agrarian unit supporting a
fighting knight. There was almost no commerce.

Beginning about the year 1440, although it had begun hundreds of

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years earlier in a small way, we got this tremendous development
that we call the commercial revolution. That is, there was an influx of
money. We got a substitution of money arrangements for personal
arrangements, and the whole development which we call the
commercial revolution.

Now, this commercial revolution — the growth of commerce, the
growth of a money economy — led ultimately to specialization,
economic division of labor, increasing exchange, and a higher level
of economic efficiency. Manors could now specialize on those things
that they could produce best and could exchange them for money,
which could be used to command the products of other manors, other
areas, or other social groups which were specializing on those things
that they could best do. We call this the commercial revolution.

All right. That’s obvious enough.

The next development is the revolution in weapons, particularly
firearms. This is something with which you are certainly familiar —
the arrival of gunpowder and the rest of it, the increasing efficiency
of missile weapons.

But I wish to emphasize here one thing which some of you may
never have thought of, and it is this: It seems to me, looking over the
whole course of history, that the kinds of weapon a society possesses
are a major factor in determining the structure of that society. To
oversimplify once again a very complicated subject, I would like to
divide weapons into two kinds — what I call amateur weapons on one
side and what I call professional weapons or specialist weapons on
the other hand. The distinction between these two is approximately
this: Amateur weapons are cheap to obtain and easy to use. Specialist
weapons are expensive to obtain and difficult to use.

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To define those terms a little bit, when I say “cheap” and “easy”
in reference to amateur weapons, I mean that an amateur weapon
which can be obtained as a result of a few weeks or a few months of
work I would call cheap. A weapon which could be used as the result
of a few weeks or a few months of practice I would call easy to use.
On the other hand, professional weapons can be so expensive that
only a very small minority of the society can possess them. And now,
as you well know, they can be so tremendously expensive that only
very wealthy governments can possess them. So specialist weapons
thus can be expensive, but they generally also are difficult to use, in
the sense that they can be used only by trained personnel who have
practiced at it not for weeks or months, but for years.

Now, this distinction between amateur weapons and professional
weapons is of tremendous significance in forming the structure of
a society, in this sense: When you have amateur weapons as the
best weapons available in a society, you have as the best weapon
something which can be obtained by almost everyone and can be
used by almost everyone. In such a society, where the amateur
form of a weapon is the best obtainable weapon, you would have a
situation where people would be relatively equal in power, because
each can have the best available weapon. In a society where people
are in fact relatively equal in power, in a showdown the majority can
compel the minority to yield.

In such a situation you ultimately will get some kind of a legal
expression of the fact that people are equal in power and that a
majority can compel a minority to consent. This leads us to democracy,
it seems to me that if you look at the history of any civilization or even
the whole history of mankind, you will see that if we were to graph
a cycle between amateur weapons and professional weapons, we
would see that the periods in which professional weapons become
supreme, going upward, let us say, are generally followed by periods

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in which authoritarian governments are established. On the other
hand, periods in which amateur weapons are supreme are generally
followed by periods, and very closely followed, within a mere couple
of generations, by periods in which more democratic regimes are
established.

Now, to look at this in the whole of human history would take us
much too much time. I do it sometimes in my courses at the university,
but here I simply wish to look at Western civilization .

In Western civilization at the beginning, let us say back in the year
1000, you had, as I pointed out a moment ago, a very rigid class
structure, in which the minority had the best weapons. In the year
1 000 there were two outstanding weapons available — the mounted
knight on horseback and the stone castle. The stone castle was a
defensive weapon. Here is a strange situation — a society with two
supreme weapons which cannot defeat each other — because a
mounted knight on horseback could not capture a stone castle and
a stone castle could not destroy a mounted knight on horseback.
But in any case this was definitely a period of specialist weapons.

A castle was obviously expensive, but a mounted knight was also
a very expensive thing. The horse of a knight was, back in the year
1000, worth 60 oxen, and an ox was too expensive for the ordinary
peasant to afford. Thus a horse was more expensive, 60 times more
expensive, than what an ordinary peasant could afford. And a knight
of this kind had to have two horses. He had to have armor and
weapons, all of them very expensive. He had to have a long period
of training. He started to train at least by the age of 10, and he was
regarded as a trained knight not much before the age of 20. Thus it
would take 1 0 years of training. So you had thus a specialist weapon.
The peasants couldn’t possibly cope with it. They had no weapons
which could possibly deal with it.

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Furthermore, if that knight had a castle, he had a supreme defensive
weapon. If anyone gave him orders: “Do this” or “Do that” he could
get in his castle and say, “Nuts” and no one could make him obey,
because they could not capture the castle. Now, I won’t give you
any reason for this except to say that a feudal knight such as I
have described was expected to serve each year only 40 days or
approximately that; and you could not capture a castle with feudal
knights, even if you had a large number of them, because you couldn’t
starve a castle out in 40 days. Well, now changes occurred. But
here you had a political and military system where the defense was
supreme. The defense was extremely decentralized — with each
castle becoming a nucleus of resistance to authority, and where the
weapons were expensive, specialized weapons. Thus you had an
authoritarian, decentralized political system.

Now, as you know, that was replaced later by an authoritarian,
centralized system. And it was replaced because of the appearance of
gunpowder and cannon, because fewer people could have gunpowder
and cannon than could have castles and thus the nuclei of political
organization became larger, organizing in each case around the
center of whoever could afford cannon.

Now, those people who could afford cannon ultimately became
kings. They took royal titles. They could knock down the castle of the
knight. They could also raise more money with their weapons. They
thus worked out a system whereby they hired knights. Hired knights
could capture castles, because they could besiege them and starve
them out, staying there as long as their pay continued to be paid. It’s
a very complicated process, but what I am trying to show you here is
that you shifted from a defensive weapon which was supreme and
decentralized but specialist, the medieval knight with a castle, 300
or 400 years later to a system where you had a still very expensive
specialized weapon, much more centralized because fewer people

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could afford it and have it, but which was not defensive. It was much
more offensive. And as a result, political units which previously had
been organized around castles now began to organize in much
larger areas. Ultimately those large areas became great duchies,
principalities, and kingdoms.

Now, as this process continued, weapons became cheaper and
cheaper. By the year 1 800 approximately the best available weapon,
or perhaps I should make it later, 1870, the best weapon available
was cheap enough to be obtained by almost anyone. A rifle in 1 860
or 1 870 or a Colt revolver could be obtained from the work of a man
over a period of a few weeks at most, and that was as good a weapon
as employees of the government had. Thus you had a democratic
amateur weapon. It could be widely dispersed, and in the political
reflection of this military fact you got democratic regimes.

The last democratic uprising in this country, Dorr’s Rebellion, in
1 842, showed clearly, as earlier in Europe the French Revolution and
other events had shown, that if the mass of the people have these
weapons, they could not be compelled to obey by government troops
who had the same weapons. Thus you got democracy.

Since then the trend in weapons has been definitely away from
amateur weapons and toward specialist weapons, as you know.
Today, a government certainly can have those weapons which are
too expensive for people to have. Therefore governments today
certainly can compel the people to obey. And unless in the future,
as I hope but I am not certain — perhaps I hope in vain — there is
some development in the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare, so that it
becomes once again difficult for a government to compel obedience
of groups which wish to refuse obedience, unless that occurs, it would
seem to me almost inevitable that political development would follow
along behind the military development; specifically that authoritarian

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governments must replace democratic governments in most places,
just as specialist weapons have replaced or are replacing amateur
weapons.

I would hope that perhaps sometime, as I say, guerrilla weapons
and guerrilla methods of warfare will make it impossible to compel
obedience with the very expensive weapons which governments will
possess. I do see some vague indications in that direction; but, being
a historian rather than a fortune teller, I will say no more about it.

Well, now, that will give us the revolution in weapons. The next thing
is the agricultural revolution. Here again is a very complicated subject,
which I must go through quite rapidly. I spoke about the medieval
manor. In the year 1 000 the medieval manor had a three-field rotation
system, a fallow-rotation system. They planted each field 2 years.
The third year it was left fallow, unplanted; and this would recoup,
presumably, some of the nutrient elements in the soil, particularly
nitrogen from the nitrogen in the air.

Now, this system was a wonderful system back in the year 600.
But by the year 1600 a better system was beginning to appear. And
that second stage in the development of agriculture, the first stage
being the self-sufficient manor on a fallow-rotation system, began
to appear as early as 1 600. The date I have given you here is 1 720,
when it really systematically began to be applied in eastern England,
particularly Norfolk. This second stage is the leguminous-rotation
system, in which a leguminous crop, whose roots trap the nitrates
from the air, was put in the fallow part of the cycle. So thus you could
plant your crops every year and not have to leave fields fallow. Instead
of leaving them fallow, you put in some such leguminous crop as
clover or alfalfa or something of that kind. This immensely increased
the nitrogen content of the soil for the subsequent year, in which you
planted grain or some other food crop.

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Notice that when you put a leguminous crop into this fallow part
of the old three-field cycle, you are planting a crop which is not
consumable by men. Clover and alfalfa are not foods, but they can
be feeds. And thus the agricultural revolution, by putting a leguminous
crop into the old cycle, was providing great stores of fodder for farm
animals. The results of this were revolutionary. In the Middle Ages
farm animals had to go out and forage for themselves, looking for
whatever hadn’t been picked. Thus animals in the Middle Ages were
excluded out from the arable field and had to shift for themselves
outside. As a result of the agricultural revolution you now had lots
of fodder, you had the fields all the time under crops each year, you
could not permit the animals to range freely, so you included them
in. You put fences around them; instead of, as in the Middle Ages,
around the arable field, you now put the fence around the animal.
And you could now feed him in a contained area with the leguminous
crop to provide his fodder.

As a result of this, the slaughter weight of farm animals in Smithfield,
England, approximately tripled in the space of 85 years. That is, from
1710-95 the slaughter weight of lambs, for example, went up from
18 pounds to more than 50 pounds. The sizes of all farm animals
drastically increased. This is something that we don’t generally think
of, but in the Middle Ages animals were very small, and men were
also quite small, which explains why modern man has such difficulty
getting into medieval armor. If you had the armor of medieval horses,
you would also discover that a modern horse couldn’t get into it,
because cattle and horses have all increased in size.

Now, that is the second stage in the agricultural revolution — the
leguminous rotation.

About 1 840 we got into a third stage. That was the chemical fertilizer
stage. This chemical fertilizer had combined with it farm machinery.

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In Germany about 1840 a German chemist discovered or at least
propagated the idea of putting a chemical fertilizer into the ground.
And about the same time, as you know, in America and other places,
McCormick and other people began to invent farm machinery, such
as the famous invention of the reaper. This is the third stage — the
chemical-machinery stage. The fourth stage in the development of
this agricultural revolution has occurred in the present century — the
use of hybrid crops which give immensely greater output, plus the
use of all kinds of sprays and chemicals.

Thus we have four stages, successively, in the agricultural revolution.
But the importance of the whole thing is that one man can produce
today immensely more food than one man could 800 or 900 years
ago. I don’t know exactly how true these figures are, but I have read
somewhere that if you were to go back 500 years, it took approximately
1 7 men to produce enough food for 21 . That would mean that if you
had 17 people tilling the soil as a full-time job, you could allow only
four people to go off and do something else — governing the country,
fighting in armies, or making handicrafts or whatever it might be.

Those figures have been more than reversed. Today four men,

I would believe, under the best modern conditions could produce
enough food approximately for close to a hundred people. What
this means is that we have released by this tremendous agricultural
revolution over the centuries enormous amounts of manpower for
nonfood-producing activities.

All right. Now we go on to the next big development here, the
Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution is also something
which goes through successive stages. I won’t really annoy you
with the stages, because you certainly must be familiar with them.

I generally divide them at least into two — the external combustion
engine — that’s the steam engine — about the year 1 780 or so; and
then the internal combustion engine, about 120 or 125 years later.

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Then after that the revolution has continued, as you know.

Now, the Industrial Revolution allowed men to produce more and
more and more nonfood products, industrial products, the craft
products, with an hour of work. As you know, products per man-hour
as a result of the Industrial Revolution greatly increased, because
the essential feature of the Industrial Revolution is not the factory or
the growth of cities or the use of capital or any of these other things
which are so frequently mentioned, and should be mentioned; but the
essential feature of the Industrial Revolution is the use of nonliving
power for production — the power from nonliving sources, such as
coal and ultimately oil, waterpower, and other sources, And we hope,

I suppose, that ultimately we will have atomic sources.

Now, let me stop at this point very briefly to point out to you the
wonderful sequence of events here. If we were to study the history of
Europe, we would find in it, I am sure, much poverty, much hardship
and misery — that is true — but the hardship and misery and poverty
were more or less incidental in this process. They weren’t intrinsic
to the process. In order to demonstrate that I will simply ask: What
is necessary for industrialism?

Well, for industrialism you need labor and food, which are
approximately the same thing. You need capital. You need invention.
These things are provided by the earlier stages here. Invention came
out of this Western ideology and the whole urge to innovate and
provide better ways of doing things. The capital which was necessary
to finance the Industrial Revolution came out of the profits of earlier
developments, out of the commercial revolution, where people made
great fortunes, for example, in India and other places. The capital to
a certain extent also came out of the agricultural revolution, where
those people who first adopted the agricultural revolution were able
to make extraordinary profits out of it, particularly in Norfolk, England,

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and other places. In spite of the fact that the soil of Norfolk is poor
soil, the agricultural revolution gave a tremendous increase in output
there, which gave large profits to the Coke family and other great
families of that area.

The Industrial Revolution required food. The agricultural revolution
provided the food. The agricultural revolution also provided the labor
which was necessary, because if fewer people can produce more
food, then you can release manpower to go into industry. Thus we
see that each stage here to a very considerable extent is built upon
the preceding stages. And it happens in an order which is not the
result of any cleverness on our part. It’s very much, it seems to me,
the result of happy accident or the favor of God or something of that
kind. It certainly wasn’t, I think, any planning which gave us this.

Now, we turn to the next development — the revolution in sanitation.
This development also I would like to divide into successive stages,
going over them very rapidly.

The sanitation revolution began about the end of the 18th century.
The first steps in it were such things as vaccination, which came in
the 1 770’s, and isolation — the discovery, for example, that diseases
such as plague and so forth could be curtailed by isolation of the sick
— but, above all, the discovery that smallpox could be controlled
by vaccination. And by the year 1800 there were people who were
frenziedly working in Europe to vaccinate Europe.

I remember in my doctorate dissertation I did research in the Archives
in Milan and I came across a Dr. Sacco, who spent his whole life
apparently 20 hours a day, year after year, trying to vaccinate people
in northern Italy faster than people were being born in northern Italy.
At that time Napoleon was the king of Italy, after 1805. Every year
Sacco sent in a report and in the report he divided up Napoleon’s

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northern Italy into departments. He took the number of people born
and the number he had vaccinated in each department; and in any
department where he hadn’t vaccinated at least as many as were
born, he had a word of apology and explanation as to why he couldn’t
do it — insufficient funds, insufficient time, insufficient assistance, and
so forth. Well, this is what I mean by the first stage of this revolution
in sanitation — the vaccination-isolation stage.

Well, approximately 60 or 70 years later we got the second stage
in the sanitation revolution; that is, the stage that we might call the
antiseptic stage. We associate it with the work of Pasteur and Lord
Lister, which showed very clearly that most disease is due to microbes,
and by controlling the microbe you can control the disease. This was,
of course, a tremendous step forward.

Now, again, later in our own century we have had tremendous
revolutionary developments in sanitation and in general medicine
associated with the antibiotics, chemistry, surgical techniques, artificial
valves in hearts, and all kinds of such things. The result of this is that
by the revolution in sanitation we have drastically reduced the death
rate, leading to a birth increase in population.

That is a perfectly satisfactory thing, because if we increase the
population as a result of item six, we have the food to feed them
as the result of item four, and we have tasks for them to do as the
result of item five. In other words, they follow along once again in a
sequence which makes sense and which is helpful to any country or
civilization which wishes to absorb it.

Now we come to the demographic explosion. The demographic
explosion results from the revolution in sanitation, and I would like
to look at table 2 at this point to show you.

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PART 2

Demographers frequently divide changes in population into four
successive stages which they call the demographic cycle. And those
authorities in population here will bear with me if I simplify too much.
The first stage is stage A. It has four characteristics — a high birth
rate; a high death rate; as a result of stable population, in which the
population numbers remain approximately the same; and in that
population numbers remain approximately the same; and in that
population an age distribution in which there are many people who are
young. In fact, half of the population would be perhaps considerably
less than 18 years of age. Now, the high birth rate means that you
have many being born, but the high death rate means that at least
a fifth of them, possibly a third of them, die in the first 2 years of
their life. That means, of course, that those who survive are a pretty
rugged bunch. They have met all the germs, or almost all the germs,
and conquered them; and they may live to a ripe old age. That, we
call stage A.

Now, what happens is, apparently, that something in the society
leads to a falling death rate. In most societies, as we look back
over history, the falling death rate was caused originally, it would
seem, by an increased output of food, conquering the problem of

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malnutrition. But at the same time the increased output of food allows
more devotion to sanitation and health, more research in medicine,
more thought about these matters, and so forth. Thus you begin to
conquer the death rate for other reasons than the overcoming of
malnutrition, namely, by the overcoming of diseases. Thus you get a
falling death rate while the birth rate is still high, which will give you
obviously a rising number of people, the third characteristic.

In that stage B you will have many people in the prime of life. By
“many” I mean at least half of the population. A society which is in
stage B is a society which, demographically speaking, is at its most
healthy and most vigorous and most powerful stage, because many
men, the majority of men, are in their productive years, and the
majority of women are in their fertile years. Therefore you have a
society which can remedy disasters to population, which can remedy
disasters in production, by more activity of women, more activity of
men, and more activity of the two together. Now, that system, stage
B, is followed by stage C, in which the birth rate begins to fall, the
death rate remains low, and as a result you begin once again to
approach a stable population, in which the population in numbers is
not drastically increasing any more; the rate of increase is slowing up.

In that society you will have many middle-aged people. I am ashamed
of myself for calling people over 30 middle-aged, particularly as last
Saturday I had my 47th birthday myself, which makes me, you see,
well over middle age. But what I mean here is that in this stage C,
with a falling birth rate, low death rate, and stable numbers, you have
at least half of your population over the age of 30 and possibly even
over the age of 35.

Now, these three stages, A, B, and C, are based largely upon
observation of what has happened. Stage D is hypothetical, because
I don’t know of any culture where we can say for sure that stage D

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has happened. But it would seem that if you had A, B, and C and the
process continues, you will reach D. In D you would have many old
people, because of the decline in the death rate, perhaps half the
population over 45 years of age, you are going to have a low birth
rate, but you are also going to have a rising death rate, because
where we have conquered the diseases of youth, we have not yet
conquered the diseases of old age, such as cardiac disease, cancer,
and other diseases associated with old age. Thus in stage D you will
get a situation where the population presumably would be falling. In
our Western civilization this cycle has been experienced, at least
through the first three stages, and we will presume that the fourth is
about due to come up, if it hasn’t already begun to knock at the door.
In table 3, the letters A, B, C, and D refer to the four stages of the
demographic cycle. The table shows which stage would be found at
the dates listed on the left in the four geographic areas mentioned
at the top.

From the table it is clear that the demographic cycle is not
simultaneous everywhere. On the contrary, it began in Western
Europe and has spread outward to other areas. As you can see all
four areas that I have here — three in Europe and one in Asia — by
“Asia” meaning the buffer fringe — all four areas were presumably
in stage A in the year 1700. But Western Europe came out of it and
got into stage B, passed into C, and I suppose that by the year 2000
will be in D. Central Europe is a little bit later in the phases. So they
don’t get to stage B until 1 850 and they don’t get to stage C until 1 950,
and so forth. They were a little bit late. Eastern Europe is even later.

For example, in 1 938 in Bulgaria the death rate of infant mortality in
the first year of life, was over 20 percent — something which would
be regarded as absolutely unacceptable in Western Europe or central
Europe in the year 1938. And thus we have that in Eastern Europe
the cycle appears a little later, so that by the year 2000 they are still

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presumably in C. But in the buffer fringe, in Ceylon, India, and areas
such as that, we find that the whole cycle is considerably later, so
that by the end of this century they would still be in stage B. Now,
stage B, I call the demographic explosion.

To indicate the demographic explosion I have a dotted line in table
3, which we might call the explosive line. It gets later and later as we
move further away from Western Europe. And as a result population
pressure occurs later as we go outward from Western Europe. So
we have an Anglo-French pressure spreading outward about 1850.
We have a Germanic-ltalian pressure in central Europe about the
beginning of this century and continuing into the 20th century. We
have a Slavic pressure at the present time. And the presumption, I
imagine, would be that in 50 or more years from now we will have an
Asiatic pressure. Thus the pressure moves outward. All right. That is
what I call the demographic explosion.

Now, to get back to table 1 , the last point in the development of
our Western experience has been this revolution in transportation
and communication. You are perfectly familiar with it. About 1750 or
so we got canals and stagecoaches and turnpikes, macadamized
roads, where Mr. Macadam told us how to make a road. And then
going on, about 1830 we got the steam engine and about 1900 we
got automobiles and then airplanes and all the rest of it. I will not
have to go into those. It’s perfectly obvious. The telegraph came in
with the railroads. Electronic communications came along with the
airplane, and so forth. Let’s now look at the buffer fringe.

When you turn to the buffer fringe, the order in which things happened
is entirely different. Where this order (Western World) was almost the
way you would have desired it if you had planned it, nothing could
be more disastrous than this order (buffer fringe). Once again in the
buffer fringe let me start with the situation before Western civilization

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came in contact with it. In Western civilization at the beginning you
had the self-sufficient manor, isolated. In Asia you did not have that.
In Asia you had a peasant society in which there was superimposed
upon the peasant a very large ruling group, which I frequently call “the
quartet,” made up of government officials and their bureaucracies,
military personnel — armies — bankers and financiers, and, lastly,
landlords. And this group of the ruling class cooperated together.
They cooperated together to exploit those who were producing food.

Furthermore, the system by which food was being produced here
was a system, especially in China, that put tremendous pressure on
the soil, and it didn’t possess that reserve which at the beginning
of our system was to be found in the fallow year. At the beginning
of our system one-third of the land was always untilled under the
fallow system. But in the buffer fringe, particularly in China, the land
is tilled generally every year. Instead of trying to replace the nutritive
elements in the soil by a fallow or even by a leguminous crop, which
they do to some extent, they replace the nutritive elements in the soil
with human excrement spread upon the ground. But this puts them
to the margin where to make their agricultural system produce more
requires a major revolutionary change.

But they didn’t get that. Instead, they got Western weapons, because
when we came in, we came in with weapons and it was because of
weapons that we were able to come in. We said to China: “We wish
to come in.” For 50 or 60 or more years they said “No.” Finally the
British in the opium wars of 1 842 and in other struggles crashed open
the door to China with our weapons. When Perry went to Japan, just
a little over a century ago, he appeared there with black ships and
with guns; and the Japanese, although they did not wish to do so,
were forced to open their doors.

Now, seeing that, the upper ruling groups wanted our weapons.

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They began to buy our weapons. But the weapons which we gave
them, even when they became what I call amateur weapons to us,
were really specialist weapons to them, because a rifle or a revolver,
which in 1880 was cheap in America, was still too expensive for a
peasant in most of Asia. He didn’t have the margin. On the other hand,
the government could buy it. So the first event which occurred there
intensified the authoritarian character of their society. Furthermore,
it intensified the ability of the ruling group to exploit and take from
the peasant larger fractions of what he was producing. Bankers were
offering credit to peasants, very reluctantly, at 40 percent interest
per year. The tax collectors were demanding more and more from
the peasant because of the weapons which they wished to buy, and
so forth.

Now, in this system the peasants still managed to survive until the
commercial crisis came along, which destroyed their ability to survive.
This is a very difficult problem. Let me try to explain it. The ruling
group in Asia, particularly in eastern Asia, but above all in China, were
taking from the peasant at the end of the 19th century so much of
what the peasant produced that there wasn’t enough left for him for
subsistence. In other words, he was forced below the subsistence
level by the contributions he had to make to the ruling quartet. How
did he manage to survive? Because obviously he did. He managed
to survive by handicraft. In their system agricultural peasantry were
idle much of the year. They had two seasons of the year when they
were very busy, but for about 5 months or even 6 months of the year
they were largely idle. We call this “agrarian underemployment” which
is still very noticeable in the buffer fringe.

Now, in this period of so much underemployment the peasants
made basketry out of the withes, hats out of straw, leatherwork, and
various other things; and these things they sold to the cities, to the
ruling group. And in return they got credit back on the food that they
had to give to this group. Thus the peasants were able at the end

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of the 1 9th century to bring themselves above the subsistence level
by selling handicraft products to the cities. This was destroyed when
Europe came into Asia with mass-production industrial goods, which
the ruling class preferred to the peasant handicraft products that they
had been buying. Apparently the ruling group, while still demanding
the same amount and even more from the peasantry, now ceased to
buy the craft products of the peasantry and, instead, were buying the
products of the industrial cities of Europe. And this put the peasantry
below the subsistence level.

What did they do about it? Not a thing, because the ruling group
had the weapons. But then something happened. The pressure of
our system upon Asia gradually impelled the ruling group to arm their
peasantry. Above all, the fact that Japan adopted our system fairly
successfully meant that if Japan were going to be stopped in exploiting
the rest of the buffer fringe, she must be resisted with mass armies.
Mass armies could be obtained only if the ruling group armed their
own peasantry. But once they armed their own peasantry, then they
couldn’t keep them down below the subsistence level. It was this
which destroyed the ruling group — that they armed the peasantry
to resist Japan, and their peasants used this weapon against the
ruling group. This is really the key to what has happened in China in
the last 60 years, and is threatening in other areas.

Now, the commercial crisis, which I have carried down to a much
later date, was followed by the transportation revolution. One of the
first things that Asia began to demand was railroads and telegraphs.
By 1880 they were building railroads and telegraph systems. One
other thing I should point out. The commercial crisis was made much
more intense in all of Asia by the fact that when Westerners came in
with guns, they made the native governments sign agreements not
to raise their import tariff over 5 percent and in one case 8 percent.
Japan didn’t get free from that tariff until the 20th century.

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In China and in the Ottoman Empire they didn’t get rid of it until
well in the 20th century. And this 5 percent tariff made it impossible
for them to keep European industrial goods out and preserve the
handicraft of their own peasantry. Well, now, the transportation and
communication revolution requires capital. Where are they going to
get it? There is no development ahead of it which would provide it.
It requires labor. Where are they going to get that? Their economic
system, their agricultural system, is already producing hardly enough.
Well, the way they got these skilled technologists, where they got
these inventions, where they got the capital was, of course, from
Europe, generally by borrowing it and building railroads and so forth.
But they were not paying for it themselves.

The next thing which occurred is sanitation and medicine. I must
say this good word for the British: When the British went into China,
went into India, or wherever they went, they did not at once try to
clean the place up. That was a good thing. When Americans go in, we
start DDT-ing and delousing everyone in sight. We do it to protect our
own people; but by doing it we are reducing the death rate in those
areas and thus we are forcing them into the demographic revolution
before they have the food to sustain it. So the sanitation and medical
revolutions arrive. Then comes the demographic revolution. That
is followed by their attempts to industrialize. They feel they must
industrialize to resist the pressure of the West, to resist the pressure
of their own areas which have industrialized, like Japan, or perhaps
even to resist the pressure of the bloc that we’re not talking about
today, the Soviet bloc. And if they are going to industrialize, again,
how can they do it?

One way it can be done is by borrowing from Europe, which is now
no longer feasible and becomes less and less feasible. Furthermore,
it represents a continuation, an increase, of colonialism, and they
wish to get away from colonialism. Instead, they wish, if possible, to

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avoid borrowing. So the way in which it must be done, it would seem,
would be to squeeze more out of their own peasantry. That is exactly
what is being done in Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia is industrializing
by increasing the pressure on their own peasantry when they really
haven’t got the agricultural revolution.

Now, to this point I have been describing what has happened. In
Asia, in the buffer fringe, and in the Soviet bloc as well, they have not
yet got seven and they have not yet got eight and I doubt very much
if they will ever get eight. But the whole thing creates a tremendously
dangerous situation. And before I stop, as I reach the end of my time,

I would like to point out this:

When I speak of the agricultural revolution in Asia, what can they do?
Well, they could adopt the second stage in our agricultural revolution,
that is, the leguminous-rotation system, which would be a big help.
But they probably cannot adopt the American stages which should
go right along with that — the farm machinery stage, the fertilizer and
chemical stages, and the gasoline power stage — because these
things are much too expensive for them and represent buying things,
such as chemicals, gasoline, and so forth, which they don’t have.
Notice a very drastic difference between American agriculture and
European agriculture. To put it briefly, it is this: In Europe they have
a limited supply of land and in Asia they have a limited supply of land
and a surplus of labor. In America we have always historically had a
plentiful supply of land and a lack of labor. Therefore our agricultural
development has worked toward increasing the output per man-hour.
In Europe and in Asia they must work in the direction of increased
output per acre or per unit of ground.

These are absolutely antithetical things, it seems to me. Our output
per acre is notoriously poor compared, for instance, to Europe’s; but
our output per man-hour is fantastically high. Therefore for us to go

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to the people of Asia and say: “You need the agricultural revolution
— that means you need tractors, you need DDT, you need chemical
fertilizers. All of these things is offering them something which they
do not need or want. What they need are much simpler things, and
I will end up with a story which illustrates it.

An American from our State Department, I believe, went to
Afghanistan to work on some kind of a farm program. Since he
had come from Iowa and knew good farming when he saw it, good
American farming, he was utterly horrified at the Afghan farming,
because it was so poor. So he wrote back to America and he wanted
certain things, notably hoes.

He couldn’t get hoes. The answer came: “We have no hoes, but
we have lots of tractors.” But tractors to these people are worthless.
So he wrote to his 4-H Club in Iowa and said, “I need hoes.” They
got 300 of them together and shipped them to him. In his own little
garden he increased output per unit of ground so fantastically that
all of the neighbors began to say, “How do you do this?” He said,
“Simply with a hoe.”

In Europe you could increase output simply by plowing 6 inches
deeper, because in most of Europe they plough only the upper few
inches. That is exhausted, but down a few few inches further is fertile
soil which hasn’t been used for centuries.

All right. We’ll stop now. I have gone over my time.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

COLONEL COOPER: Gentlemen, Dr. Quigley is ready for questions.
QUESTION: Sir, if I may be so impertinent as to say this, your

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stylized presentation that you made, as compared to the increase
of knowledge, may change the time cycle as shown on your chart.
I am leading to the knowledge you seem to have of the efforts in
birth control and their effect on this demographic explosion. Will this
increased knowledge change and compress the time cycle so that it
can be done in appreciably less time than in past history.

DR. QUIGLEY: Being a historian and thus acquainted with the past
rather than a fortune teller who can look into the future, I really cannot
answer that question. It is true that many of these nations are trying
— India and others, particularly Japan — to use birth control methods
in order to reduce the impact of the demographic explosion. But that
will alleviate, I think rather than change the order of things; and it
will still leave many other problems of a major character, namely, for
example, where do they get capital? They still have to get it out of
their agricultural system.

So you can by such things as birth control and many other techniques
alleviate this problem. I don’t think, though I don’t know this, that you
can make any major rearrangement of the sequence. I hope you
can. I don’t want to be pessimistic. I think there is a solution for Asia.
Last year, when I talked on this, I made a point which I neglected to
make today. That is that in Asia they have a choice right now between
using the method which the Russians are using, that is, to take it out
of the hides of the peasantry, or adopt some new method, which is
not the American method. The American way of life is not exportable
to these people, it seems to me, because of this sequence of the
arrangement. They have in Asia today the example of China, which
is copying the Russian method, and the example of India, which is
fumbling around trying to find the third way. And I think this is the
most critical problem of that whole area: Will China or will India, by
conclusively demonstrating that it is superior, lead to a kind of panic
to adopt and follow their procedures? If China wins out, I think we

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will be in a very serious situation with the whole buffer fringe that
may go to the Communist bloc simply because they have to adopt
the Communist method if it works.

QUESTION: On this chart of the demographic cycle I was interested
in Asia, where you said the demographic explosion is yet to come. Is
this a sort of second cycle? Was that earlier invasion of Europe by
the Mongol hordes an expression of another demographic explosion
in earlier years?

DR. QUIGLEY: No. These things don’t happen over the weekend.
They don't even happen in a year’s time. The demographic explosion
in Asia has definitely already started, but it is going to get worse. But
I simply divided this up into 50-year periods, and I don’t want to put
it at 1950, because the real impact is in the future. So I made it the
year 2000. But the one that has begun now is the same one which
will hit in a real blow some time in the future.

QUESTION: Is this a repeat cycle from the old cycle of the hordes
that came over to Europe?

DR. QUIGLEY: No. They were forced out not by a rise in population,
but by the drying up of Asia. In other words, when the desert areas of
Asia dried, the Desert of Gobi became larger, and that forced pastoral
peoples outward. They either went down into China, as the Huns did
in the year 300, or they came westward toward Europe. That was
climate rather than population.

QUESTION: Do you foresee any possibility of these buffer states to
have enough room to increase productivity on existing land as they
come to the agricultural revolution ahead of the Industrial Revolution
and therefore provide the capital and manpower to do the job in the
future?

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DR. QUIGLEY: I feel pretty strongly that they must get the agricultural
revolution before the Industrial Revolution if they are going to do it
in a non-Communist way.

Now, the situation is diverse. In China there isn’t available land.
In India there is a large quantity of available land. In the Near East,
in the Arabic countries, there really isn’t much land. But there are
ways in which they can increase it, because there are many of those
areas, for example, the Islamic countries, which have rather low food
productivity now, but which had much higher food productivity 2,000
years ago. Simply copying what the Romans found when they went
there would be a very helpful thing. The people of Israel are trying to
do that, as you know, in Neguib and the southern desert-and other
places. So the problem differs from area to area. On the whole, except
for India and Ceylon, I wouldn’t say that there’s much spare land, but
that does not mean that the problem is insoluble.

QUESTION: In your chart that you put on the screen, the development
sequence of the Western group as against the buffer fringe seemed
to be somewhat different in terms of timing. Could you relate the
principal development of those two together in terms of approximate
times? I realize that the last two in the buffer fringe —

DR. QUIGLEY: You mean I didn’t date the ones in the buffer fringe?

QUESTION: Yes. I was trying to tie the two together.

DR. QUIGLEY: Well, the reason I didn’t date them was because they
are all in the last 150 years. In other words, the Empress of China
went in to open up China in 1 794, Perry went to Japan in 1 854, and
so forth. So it’s all the last 150 years or at least the last 200 years
for the developments in the buffer fringe. And when you look at that
diagram, please be aware that this is a rigid, much oversimplified

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thing. If I have to talk about it in only 50 or 60 minutes, I have to
oversimplify it.

QUESTION: You stated that stage D of the demographic cycle was
theoretically based on extrapolations from the previous stages. Don’t
we have a preview of that in Ireland? From what I have read about
it, they have a low birth rate and —

DR. QUIGLEY: Yes. In other words, Western Europe seems already
to be approaching this. You may remember that the French General
Staff has been worried for more than 50 years, going back to 1910
or even earlier, over the fact that the birth rate in France was falling
while the birth rate in Germany didn’t seem to be falling. So there
were bound to be many more Germans in the future and many
fewer Frenchmen. It is quite true that in the extreme western edges
of Western Europe we already see it. We don’t see it just in Ireland.
It’s also true in Brittany, and it’s probably true in places like Galicia
and Spain. Why it is true on the western edges I don’t know. But you
can observe the beginnings of it there.

QUESTION: You say on the one hand that the American way of
life is not exportable. At the same time we as a Nation seem to be
encouraging our private capital to go abroad, to make investments in
these foreign countries, these underdeveloped countries. Presumably
the export of our capital, our dollars, carries with it some strings
which could tend to impose on these countries some measure of
the American way of life. Are these two situations compatible, or
fundamentally is it possible that the export of our capital may not be
as wise as it sounds?

DR. QUIGLEY: This once again is the result of oversimplification.
American capital can go abroad, but it isn’t really used in the American
way. To give you an example: If American capital goes abroad and

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goes into mining or goes into industry, the whole ways in which it is
used are not the ways it is used here. For example, in the mines,
let us say, of southern Africa you bring the natives on a 3-, or 4-, or
5-year contract, lock them up in a compound, feed them, and take
entire care of them. That’s the method adopted by Cecil Rhodes
some 50 or 60 years ago, you see. That isn’t the American way of
doing mining, even though, they are using American capital, as they
must use capital if they are going to industrialize. Or again in other
parts of the buffer fringe you will get a great deal of part-time labor.
Even where people come to work in industry, as in India, they do not
leave the farm. They are still peasants. They take off in the harvest
season. They take off in the planting season. They come back to work.
You never know whether you have them or not. So the whole labor
problem, the whole technology problem, and many other things are
quite different from what they are in America. And when I say that the
American way of life isn’t exportable, what I mean is that when we go
abroad, let’s look at what is there, see what their problems are, see
what solutions are feasible in terms of what is available, and do not
go out there, as so many Americas do, saying: “We’ve got to make
nice little Americans out of them”; getting out at the 5-o’clock whistle
and rushing home to look at TV or something like that. That’s what
I meant really by that.

QUESTION: You mentioned that the overthrow of the ruling group in
China was a result of the mass arming of the peasants, as opposed
to what is taking place in western Asia. Do you have in mind primarily
our military aid programs? If so, are we in fact contributing to the
creation of revolution rather than maintaining stability, as intended
by these programs?

DR. QUIGLEY: No. I was referring to something earlier than this. You
notice that in the buffer fringe sequence the first one here is weapons.

I was referring rather to the fact that the Chinese Government armed

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its own peasantry not with a modern, specialized weapon so much
as they did with the earlier amateur weapons, simply the rifle. Now,
if a government begins to get the modern, specialized weapons,
then it will again be in a position to oppress its own people and thus
adopt the Russian system, which is that the Russian ruling group,
with specialized weapons, can force the peasantry to give up most
of what they produce, to pay a 60 percent or larger turnover tax on
the consumer goods they buy, and so forth. Now, this process of
giving weapons into the hands of the lower classes, which leads to
the overthrow of the upper class, was true in the Far East. It was true
in much of the Malay area. It has not yet been true in India. There
are very peculiar reasons there — Gandhi and so forth. It certainly
has not been true in the Near East, where the Arab governments
still have the weapons and the Arab peasants do not have them and
cannot get them. And when the government finally does get armored
cars and tanks and these other things, some of which they do have,

I don’t see how the peasant will be able to resist them if he is able to
get, let us say, a revolver. It depends on the guerrilla thing. The ability
of the guerrillas in southeast Asia and Morocco to withstand modern
specialized weapons is to me most reassuring in terms of the future
of democracy, although it may seem to most of you as military men
a very bad situation, because as military men you would prefer a
situation where the military could impose their will upon the people.
But I, as a defender of liberty, prefer a situation where the ordinary
individual can tell any government, “I won’t.” “No” is a beautiful word
except when it’s from the lips of a beautiful woman.

COLONEL COOPER: Dr. Quigley, I will not attempt to pull a Tom
Crystal act here. I’d just like to say that you have shown a great depth
of knowledge of your subject, which has been presented in a most
excellent manner. Thank you very much.

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CHANGING COGNITIVE SYSTEMS AS A
UNIFYING TECHNIQUE IN AMERICAN STUDIES

Address given in November 1966 at The American Studies Association

There is no known transcript of this address, thus we are dependent
on Carroll Quigley’s re-creation in a three-page letter to GU professor
T. Leonard Mikules.

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
WASHINGTON, D.D. 20007

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY 12 March 1967

Mr. T. Leonard Mikules
11 Catherdal Street
Annapolis, Maryland

Dear Leonard,

I should apologize for my delay in answering your note of 26
January, but since you are well acquainted with the academic
rat-race of oral and other examinations in which we live at this
time of year, I shall not try to justify my delay. You asked for a
copy of the speech I gave at the Local chapter of the American
Studies Association in November. Unfortunately, I do not ever
write out such lectures and thus have no copy, but I shall give
you the gist of it, because there should be a record of it for my
own files as well.

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The title was “Changing cognitive systems as a unifying
technique in American Studies”. I sought to show that historical
changes in the cognitive systems of Americans would provide
a helpful method for unifying the study of American history,
literature and philosophy, which is the aim of the association. My
interest in the subject arose from a life-long study of cognitive
systems of men turnout history. .

A cognitive system could be defined thus: every people, in
order to think about its experiences and to communicate about
them, must structure these experiences. At a minimum this
process means that the culture imposes on its experiences
a system of categories and a system of values for these
categories. Thus a system of cognition consists of categorization
and valuation applied to experience. Since experience is
existential in the sense that it is dynamic and unique, with each
event occurring at a specific point in time, space, abstraction,
social and personal, context, and can be understood in
interior consciousness and communicated to others only if it
is classified into some kind of classification, such a cognitive
system is necessary if man is to be human in the sense that
he is both aware and communicative with others. Yet, because
that cognitive system is subjective and conventional (within the
social and linguistic system which created it), it becomes the
framework within which, the people of that society experience
life and it is a screening barrier, which prevents them from
experiencing those things for which no provision exists within
their cognitive system. At times this means that a cognitive
system, becomes a barrier to those experiences which are
necessary to the very basic needs of humans, and the members
of the society abandon their society’s cognitive system, leaving
it as an untenanted culture, as the Christians, and others did
with Classical culture in the period from AD 200 to 950, when
a totally new cognitive (based on hierarchy and quite different

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values) replaced the dualistic and paralysed cognitive system
of Classicism. In turn, the Western cognitive system became
ossified about 1300, and was unable to continue on in its growth,
along the lines of Western life as embodied in the intrinsic nature
of the Christian revelation, and turned back to the Classical
example, whose inability to deal with the basic human problems
had been fully revealed a thousand years before. (The mark of
this return is to be seen in such events as the turn to Roman law,
the refusal to go on to philosophic nominalism from moderate
realism the failure, to escape from the inhibiting influence of two
valued Greek logic which made it impossible to introduce motion
and change into the Western vision of reality and thus led to
the struggle with Galileo and, above all, with Darwin, and the
introduction of duality and absolutism, into the medieval pluralist
relativism).

A cognitive system structures reality and thus limits human
experience within that culture , so that the members of that
culture cannot become aware, think about, or communicate
about what is excluded. On the whole, individuals socialized
in a culture do not deal with actuality at all but deal with their
society’s cognitive system’s structuring of actuality. This process
is established in any individual chiefly through adopting the
language of his culture, since any language has an unstated
assumed cognitive implied in it. For example, European
languages, by organizing action into past-present-future in the
verb system makes time and this structuring of time part of the
process by which those language-users structure experience.

On the other hand, Bantu-speakers use verb systems based on
completed and uncompleted action. We now structure time into
two (Greek 2-valued logic again), past and future, with is the
present simply the dimensionless division between these two,
but the Bantu structures time with a broad extended duration
of the present, a fairly long past, but an almost dimensionless

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future. As a result, the future-preference of our value-system
(under which we are prepared to make almost any present
sacrifice for the sake of some hypothetical future benefits; this
is at the base of our religious system and from it came the base
for saving and capital-accumulation in our economic system) is
not compatible with the present preference of the Bantu, or the
average American urban negro, so that our social and economic
way of life cannot be exported to either of them.

In a similar way, we divide the single continuum of color in the
rainbow into 6 divisions with green and blue as separate colors,
and we, from our background in a temperate well-watered
climate see a beautiful scene as a contrast of greens and blues,
travelling thousands of miles to see a view which consists of four
bands of these: a foreground of green, probably the nearer shore
of a lake; band of blue, water; beyond that (which in a picture
will be higher) a band of green (probably the farther shore, of the
lake) and, above that, the blue sky. Thus a beautiful scene to us
is four bands of alternating green and blue, but to an African (or
a Navahoe) this would be dull, since it would be all one color, and
his idea of beauty consists of contrasts in the longer-wave end of
the spectrum (red-orange-yellow-brown) where he divides up the
spectrum into smaller and mora numerous divisions than we do.

In a similar way, we divide the continuum of states of water into
five (ice, snow, slush, water, steam), while the Esquimo divides
snow alone into about 52 divisions based on what it is adapted
to in his cultural usage. Thus when he looks at snow he does not
see what we see, just as we in DC. do not see the same thing
as the man in Stowe, Vermont, sees, when we look at snow,
although we do see the same word for it.

The dimensions to which a society’s cognitive system is
applied are numerous and include, as well as those mentioned,
space, nature, human nature (such as body and soul or body-
emotions-reason, etc.), security and many others. In the middle

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ages we divided the individual life cycle into only two parts
(Greek two-valued logic again): child and adult, with the division
about 3 years. Today the most important stage is adolescence,
which the middle ages did not recognise at all. (See Philippe
Aries’ paperback “Centuries of Childhood” ). Today we have at
least 8 or 9 stages, like many African tribes where these are
institutionalized often with crises or initiation ceremonies as
transition points.

The study of these changes would provide a unifying
principle for American studies, especially if we recognize that
our increasingly complex social structure is creating different
cognitive systems for the various classes. Shifts both in
structuring time and space (such as shifts from the agricultural
year and the farmer’s day, both based on the sun, to our abstract
division of time for urban, commercial, future-preference living
(a change which the rural negro cannot make with facility,
especially, with his African background), and the shift from
human experience to relations with objects or abstractions from
the older emphasis on relations with nature and the recent
emphasis on inter-personal relations (again, a movement toward
an African form of life pattern) among our young people. In this
process both nature and weather have bean driven farther from
immediate human experience, and the effort to recapture those
has become one of the chief aims of the new leisure.

The Vision which we once had of the American class structure
has changed steadily, most recently from a ladder to a kind of
planetary system centered on govern power.

Most of our literature from about 1900 to about 1940 was an
attack on the middle-class cognitive system (future preference,
endlessly expandible material demand, external, material status
symbols, psychic anxiety, etc), but since 1940 most of our
literature has: been simply a verbalization, outside our cognitive
system, and outside of middle-class values, as protest against

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these and as a rejection of all the cognitive structure which
makes thought and communication possible within our society.
This began with the praise of violence in social Darwinism and
works such as Sorel’s Reflections on Violence . It culminated
in the theatre of the Absurd and the meaningless poetry and
painting of today, which reject meaning by rejecting all context.

This rather chaotic flood of ideas, some of which are
undoubtedly obscure because they are two briefly stated,
will give you some idea of the value of the study of changing
cognitive systems in American studies, I could sum up these
uses in five headings:

1 . As a unifying method for American studies, since all would
have to analyze in terms of experience, categories, and
symbols,

2. as a method for studying social change by studying the
process by which individuals are socialized in American
society in various times, including the use of such underused
sources as educational history, history of the family, the

role of literature as both a refection of life and a substitute
for living, and the verbalization or philosophy, as well as
providing a new approach to innovation in American life,
especially the process by which each generation rejects at
least part of its parents’ outlook,

3. as a technique for getting behind all cognitive systems to the
actuality of human experience,

4. as a technique for obtaining originality in scholarly works,
since the-“originality” of most of these does not rest in any
new discoveries but in expressing in new cognitive terms old
actualities,

5. as a valuable technique for dealing with American social
problems, such as poverty, racial issues, or war and peace,
most of which are rooted in epistemological failures.

Please excuse the haste and errors of this letter, I have no

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stenographic help and I work poorly on a machine. To reduce
errors I’ll send you a Xerox copy.

Best wishes to you and to Roberta; I am glad that you are
enjoying semi-retirement.

Very truly,

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ROUND TABLE REVIEW:
THE NAKED CAPITALIST

Taken from: Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
(Vol. 6, Num. 3/4-Autumn-Winter 1971), pp. 99-116

Participants:

William E. Fort, Jr.

Louis C. Midgley
Carroll Quigley
W. Cleon Skousen

Dialogue departs from its usual review format in the following
exchange of points of view on W. Cleon Skousen’s latest book,
The Naked Capitalist (Salt Lake City, Utah: published by the author,
1970. 144 pp., $2.00), a review-essay of Dr. Carroll Quigley’s book,
Tragedy and Hope (New York: Macmillan, 1966). Originally we asked
Professor Louis C. Midgley of Brigham Young University to review
Skousen’s book for Dialogue. Shortly after receiving Midgley’s review
we received an unsolicited review from Professor William E. Fort, Jr.,
also of Brigham Young University, which took an approach opposite
that of Midgley. Since much of the controversy surrounding Skousen’s
book centered on the interpretation of Quigley’s book, we thought it
might be interesting to get a response from Quigley to Skousen’s book
and Midgley’s review. In a further attempt at a dialogue we invited
Skousen to reply to Midgley and Quigley and, finally, invited Midgley
to write a rejoinder to Skousen. All in all, it is a lively exchange and
one we hope our readers enjoy.

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THE NAKED CAPITALIST

William E. Fort, Jr.

Dr. Carroll Quigley’s book Tragedy and Hope might have escaped
the attention of anyone but a few scholars except for its careful
dissection by W. Cleon Skousen. Skousen possesses unique qualities
for this work. His keen, analytical mind has been sharpened by legal
training and by sixteen years of service with the F.B.I. In addition, he
was a distinguished Chief of Police in Salt Lake City for four years
and was editorial director of the law enforcement magazine Law and
Order. He has been a professor for seven years at Brigham Young
University.

Professor Skousen’s keen eye detected passages, sandwiched
between lengthy discourses in Dr. Quigley’s book, that reflected a
fascinating pattern of information, fitting neatly into many things he
had learned in his years of intelligence work. He knew, for example,
that certain very wealthy and powerful persons, both within this
country and abroad, are and have been doing things in support of
the Communist conspiracy throughout the world. Dr. Bella Dodd, a
former member of the national committee of the U.S. Communist
Party, told Skousen several years ago that she first became aware
of some superleadership right after World War II, when the U.S.
Communist Party had difficulty in getting instructions from Moscow
on several vital matters requiring immediate attention. The American
Communist hierarchy was told that any time they had an emergency
of this kind they should contact any one of three designated persons
at the Waldorf Towers. Dr. Dodd noted that whenever the Party
obtained instructions from any of these three men, Moscow always
ratified them. What puzzled Dr. Dodd was the fact that not one of
these contacts was a Russian or a Communist. In fact, all three were
extremely wealthy capitalists! Dr. Dodd said, “I would certainly like to
find out who is really running things. I think the Communist Conspiracy

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is merely a branch of a much bigger conspiracy!”

The portions gleaned by Professor Skousen from Dr. Quigley’s book
relate to the secret powers operating behind the scenes to destroy
our constitutional republic and our traditional freedom and to establish
a one-world, socialist government. Dr. Quigley speaks as an insider
of some twenty years standing. He approves wholeheartedly of the
secret machinations of those who would destroy our nation and
place the world under a socialist dictatorship. He sneers at those
American patriots who are fighting Communism, stating that they have
missed the right target — the secret group of insiders who would rule
the world. He feels that it would be tragedy for the free-enterprise,
constitutional Americans to win. On the contrary he believes that our
real hope lies in the victory of the secret operators. Hence the title of
his book, Tragedy and Hope.

Dr. Quigley, however, believes that the real battle is finished and
that his side has won. In effect, he believes that it is all over but the
shouting and that it is now next to impossible to reverse the process.
He traces the secret movement over the years, naming names and
places. Some of the names will come as a shock to many Americans.
The secret moves will shock them further.

Professor Skousen does an outstanding job of bringing together
and crystallizing the important facts of Dr. Quigley’s book. The Naked
Capitalist is a difficult book to put down. Skousen’s commentary is
enlightening. The complete index and sub-index make it easy to trace
the activities of men and organizations.

The Naked Capitalist will answer many questions concerning the
strange things that have been going on in the world and in this country
for many years. Those who do not have the patience to tackle Dr.
Quigley’s 1300 page book directly should by all means read Professor
Skousen’s 144 page commentary. This book is a must for those
interested in what is taking place behind the scenes.

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THE CULT OF CONSPIRACY

Louis C. Midgley

The Naked Capitalist is intended to expose a massive, top-secret,
Capitalist super-conspiracy. Communism and socialism, we are told,
are merely some of the fruit of this Gigantic International Monolithic
Network of Total Global Power. Skousen now believes that it is the
Capitalists who have been secretly “running the world” for many
years, forming “a conspiratorial control center higher and stronger
than either Moscow or Peiping.” The Naked Capitalist is intended to
strip bare this “Global Establishment” which secretly plans, plots, and
conspires to rule the world. Now you have perhaps always thought
that the hard-working, money-making Capitalists were the Good Guys
in Skousen’s demonology. Nothing could be further from the truth.
He believes that “globalism,” “internationalism,” “one-worldism,” and
ruthless centralized dictatorship are what the Capitalist demons have
in mind. They only use communism to achieve these goals.

The “global planners” who are at the center of the Capitalist
conspiracy are identified by Skousen as the “leaders of the world’s
secret center of international banking,” the “super-rich,” the “super
capitalists.” The “leaders of London and Wall Street” are chiefs of
“the Anglo-American secret society” who are behind communism
and everything else. Skousen puts bankers at the top of the list of
conspirators: the Rothschilds, Barings, Lazards, Paul Warburg, J.
P. Morgan. But also included are the following: John Foster and
Alan Dulles, the Rockefellers, Cecil Rhodes, Arnold Toynbee, Walter
Lippman, Albert Einstein, George F. Kennan, Douglas Dillon, Dean
Ache-son, Henry Kissinger, Henry Cabot Lodge, Arthur Burns, George
Ball, Ellsworth Bunker, Paul Hoffman, McGeorge Bundy, the Kennedy
family, Dwight Eisenhower, John Dewey, and many others. By any
standards, this is quite a list.

The Capitalists, he now tells us, are “the world’s secret power

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structure” and they merely form, use and manipulate communism
and socialism and many other things for their own evil purposes.
He knows that this thesis is not likely to be believed. “If I had said it,
people may have found it too fantastic to believe,” Skousen wrote in
a letter that accompanied copies of the book that he gave to B.Y.U.
faculty members. He claims, however, that he has actually discovered
“someone on the inside [of the supposed Capitalist conspiracy] who
is willing to tell the story.” “I have,” he writes, “waited thirty years for
someone on the inside of the modern political power structure to
talk. At last somebody has.” Skousen is referring to Carroll Quigley, a
professor of history at Georgetown University. Roughly forty full pages
of The Naked Capitalist consist of direct quotations from Quigley’s
Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.

But does Quigley really say what Skousen claims he says? The
answer is both yes and no. The answer is yes, if you mean: “Are
the long passages that Skousen quotes actually in Quigley’s book?”
Quigley does discuss the role of financial capitalism in recent history
as well as various “networks” of Capitalist influence and power. But the
answer is an emphatic and final no, if you mean: “Does Quigley think
he is revealing or has he revealed a Great Super-Secret Capitalist
Conspiracy behind communism?” This is, of course, the crucial point.

Much of what Skousen claims to have found in Quigley’s book is
simply not there. There are numerous places in The Naked Capitalist
in which Skousen (1) asserts something about Quigley but then
inadvertently reveals that he completely misunderstands Quigley’s
remarks; (2) simply invents fantastic ideas and attributes them to
Quigley; or (3) makes inferences from Quigley’s book that go far
beyond the bounds of honest commentary. By way of illustration, I
will examine a small sampling of these many passages.

1 . According to Skousen, “When Dr. Quigley decided to write
his 1300-page book called Tragedy and Hope, he knew he
was deliberately exposing one of the best-kept secrets in the
world. As one of the elite insiders, he knew the scope of this

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power complex and he knew that its leaders hope to eventually
attain total global control (p. 4, italics added). Skousen cites no
evidence whatsoever to support his suppositions about what
Quigley knew. He fastens on one passage (Quigley, p. 950)
and infers the totally unwarranted conclusion that Quigley was
an “elite ‘insider’ “on a global conspiracy of Capitalists who are
behind communism. Quigley uses the term “insider” merely to
describe his role as historian with access to primary source
material.

2. Skousen writes: “Obviously, disclosing the existence of a
mammoth power network which is trying to take over the
world could not help but arouse the vigorous resistance of the
millions of people who are its intended victims. So why did
Quigley write his book? His answer appears in a number of
places but is especially forceful and clear on pages 979-980.

He says in effect, that it is now “too late for the little people

to turn back the tide” (p. 4). The truth is that on pages 979-
980 Quigley says nothing at all about the purpose of his book.
The passage in question is merely a negative account of the
isolationist impulse found between 1945-55 in which some
favorite nostrums of Skousen are lampooned.

3. Skousen claims that “all through his book, Dr. Quigley assures
us that we can trust these benevolent, well-meaning men who
are secretly operating behind the scenes. THEY are the hope
of the world. All who resist them represent tragedy. Hence the
title of the book” (p. 5). If Quigley does something “all through
his book,” as Skousen claims, it should be easy to give some
examples — well, one passage at least. All Skousen presents
are his own inferences, for which there is no textual support. If
the reader is interested in what Quigley had in mind by the title
Tragedy and Hope, he should consult pages 131 Off., for it is
there that Quigley explains that the tragedy is the threat of war
and the hope is that we will come to practice Christian love.

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4. After mentioning the imagery in Revelations 13:15-17,
Skousen tells us that “Dr. Quigley assures us that this type
of global power structure is on the verge of becoming a total
reality. He points out that during the past two centuries when
the peoples of the world were gradually winning their political
freedom from the dynastic monarchies, the major banking
families of Europe and America were actually reversing the
trend by setting up new dynasties of political control through
formation of international financial combines” (p. 7). While it
is true that Quigley talks about international bankers and their
activities, nowhere does he call their activities a “global power
structure.” This is Skousen’s invention. Nor does Quigley
connect the activities of bankers with secret combinations or
anything mentioned in Scripture. The assertions that follow
the words “Quigley assures us” and “he points out” are merely
surmises and conclusions drawn by Skousen and then
attributed to Quigley to give them some authority.

5. Skousen thinks it is the Super-Capitalist bankers who are
behind all of this and who are chief enemies of the “free-
enterprise, property-oriented, open society. . .” (p. 24). But
why would these “super-capitalists,” who have the most to
gain from free-enterprise, try to destroy it and replace it with
socialism? “Dr. Qpigley provides the answer to this question
but it is so startling that at first it seems virtually inconceivable.
It becomes rational only as his scattered references to it

are collected and digested point by point. In a nutshell, Dr.
Quigley has undertaken to expose what every insider like
himself has known all along — that the world hierarchy of the
dynastic super-rich is out to take over tire planet, doing it with
Socialistic legislation where possible, but having no reluctance
to use Communist revolution where necessary” (p. 25). But
where does Quigley say these things? Quigley is supposedly
Skousen’s one and only “insider” who has “talked” — his

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star witness. Quigley does not support in any way Skousen’s
conspiracy thesis; he has a thesis of his own, but it is not the
one Skousen claims to have found in Quigley’s book.

6. “As we shall observe shortly,” Skousen writes, “Dr. Quigley is
sometimes reluctant to admit the full ramifications of his ugly
thesis when the shocking and often revolting implications of it
spill out on the blood-stained pages of recent history” (p. 25).
This is a confused way of granting that Quigley’s book does
not provide support of Skousen’s thesis. But, says Skousen,
this “strange contradiction . . . should offer no difficulty to the
reader once he understands what is happening.” Of course,
once you accept Skousen’s views, it is apparently very easy
to interpret anything. But I had the impression that Quigley
was the “insider” who had told all and therefore provided the
proof that needs no interpretation. However, once we look at
Quigley’s book, we find that nothing in it makes Skousen-type
sense unless it is interpreted in a special way — unless the
reader “understands what is happening.” It is Skousen who
tells us “what is happening” and not Quigley. He is arguing with
his own (and only) witness. A confession hardly needs a key
so that we can interpret it. And a wild set of inferences hardly
constitutes a confession.

7. Skousen writes: “Dr. Quigley bluntly confesses that the
International Bankers who had set out to remake the world
were perfectly confident that they could use their money
to acquire the cooperation and eventual control of the
Communist-Socialist conspiratorial groups” (p. 38, italics
added). Where does Quigley “bluntly confess” such things?
The truth is that Skousen is reporting what he believes the
international bankers are up to and then falsely attributing his
own invention to Quigley.

8. According to Skousen: “It may seem somewhat contradictory
that the very people whom Marx identified as the epitome

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of ‘Capitalism’should be conspiring with the followers of
Marx to overthrow traditional Capitalism and replace it with
Socialism. But the record supports the Quigley contention
that this is precisely what has been happening” (p. 38, italics
added). Where did Quigley contend any such thing? What
“record” supports such a contention? These are again wholly
unwarranted inferences.

9. Skousen refers to “Dr. Quigley’s admission that the remaking
of the world by the super-rich was to be along the socialist
lines taught at those British institutions which look upon global
socialism as the hope of the world” (p. 39, italics added).
Where does Quigley admit such a thing? Here is Quigley’s
statement: “The chief aims of this elaborate, semi-secret
organization [the Round Table Groups financed by bankers,
as Quigley has earlier shown] were largely commendable:

to coordinate the international activities and outlooks of
the English-speaking world into one (which would largely,
it is true, be that of the London group); to work to maintain
peace; to help backward, colonial, and underdeveloped
areas to advance toward stability, law and order, and
prosperity ALONG LINES SOMEWHAT SIMILAR TO THOSE
TAUGHT AT OXFORD AND THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
(ESPECIALLY THE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND THE
SCHOOLS OF AFRICAN AND ORIENTAL STUDIES)”
(Quigley, p. 954; quoted by Skousen, p. 39). Skousen reads
the last few lines as an open admission that some super-rich
types were conspiring to remake the world “along socialist
lines.” I cannot find anything in the passage which infers that
anything would be done “along socialist lines.” I have the
impression that Skousen uses expressions like “along socialist
lines” when Quigley and most everyone else would say “under
control by wealthy capitalists.”

10. According to Skousen, “One of the singular and amazing

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things about Dr. Quigley’s book is his willingness to frankly
and unashamedly confess [sic] some of the most serious acts
of subversion by his comrades-in-arms and then think nothing
of turning around and flatly denying that they would have had
a hand in such a foul and dirty business as betraying people
like the Chinese to Communism” (p. 47, italics added). Quigley
does say that “there is no evidence of which I am aware of
any explicit plot or conspiracy to direct American policy in a
direction favorable either to the Soviet Union or to international
communism” (p. 947, quoted by Skousen, p. 45). Where are
the frank and unashamed admissions? The “comrades-in-
arms” remark is gratuitous.

11. According to Skousen, “Dr. Quigley’s disclosure that the
Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of Pacific
Relations were responsible for what turned out to be a
paroxysm of world-wide political subversion, is no more
shocking titan his bold declaration that the global collectivists
of the London-Wall Street Axis were equally successful in
attacking the whole foundation of American culture. . .” (p.

57, italics added). Quigley does discuss the activities and
financial backing of the Council on Foreign Relations and the
Institute of Pacific Relations, but he does not thereby disclose
that they were responsible for any political subversion (either
world-wide or national). Nor does he make a bold declaration
about global collectivists being “successful in attacking the
whole foundation of American culture.” These are entirely the
conclusions and opinions of Skousen and they find no support
whatever in Quigley’s book.

12. Skousen constantly attempts to demonstrate that financial
capitalism both directs and supports communism. He
asserts, for example, that “Quigley says” that “the secret
Establishment powers” are attempting “to gradually move [sic]
humanity toward a global collectivist society” (p. 87). There

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is, however, nothing in Tragedy and Hope that links financial
capitalism with the goal of “a global collectivist society” or
communism or socialism or dictatorship. Quigley notes that
the two organizations “were much concerned with freedom
of expression for minorities and the rule of law for all”; they
“constantly thought in terms of Anglo-American solidarity, of
political partition and federation. . .” (Quigley, p. 954). Exactly
what is wrong with such goals? Quigley shows how a few
“Communist sympathizers” and fellow travelers infiltrated
the CFR and IPR in the 1930’s. This is not a new revelation.
Quigley also observes that groups such as IPR and CFR
constitute the “power structure which the Radical Right in
the United States has been attacking for years in the belief
that they were attacking the Communists” (956). Quigley
calls these efforts of the Radical Right “misdirected attacks.”
They are so for several reasons, the chief one being that the
bankers and their various organizations — what Quigley calls
facetiously “the English and American Establishments” — are
not Communist or subversive at all and never have been,
though some of die groups supported by bankers were once
infiltrated by a few sympathizers and fellow travelers. (See
Quigley, p. 956).

The story Quigley tells is good enough. Why then expand it
into a lurid tale of global conspiracy and subversion when it
is not even a story of a secret conspiracy at all, but merely
a reasonable account of the role of one group within the
complex of American and world politics? It is by a strange
magic that Quigley’s account of the role of certain international
bankers and their friends in England and the United States
becomes transformed in Skousen’s mind into a top-secret,
Super-capitalist, Super-conspiracy of a global nature.

Quigley makes it clear that banking interests and the groups
they support are (1) not secret (only semi-secret like most

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financial, governmental and university affairs generally), (2)
not a subversive or criminal conspiracy, (3) not global, only
international in the sense that some ties were maintained
between bankers and intellectuals in England and the United
States), and (4) not really monstrous, sinister, or demonic (but
more nearly meddling, naive, idealistic and vain — all rather
typical faults of both intellectuals and the wealthy).

13. According to Skousen, “Every once in a while, the network
lets down its guard long enough for us to get a slight but
alarming peep into the inner parts of the mammoth machine
winch Dr. Quigley believes is now too big to stop. When one
contemplates the interlocking global ramifications which this
power structure has developed, it is little wonder that Dr.
Quigley feels so tremendously confident about its ultimate and
irrevocable victory” (p. 107; italics added). Here again we see
Skousen at work asserting what Quigley believes and feels.
Skousen supports neither of these assertions with textual
evidence. Nowhere in his book does Quigley say or imply the
things that Skousen attributes to him.

14. The evidence and argument of The Naked Capitalist is a
weak reed, but the book still has a good deal of emotional
appeal and persuasive power. The message is cleverly staged
and artfully developed. Skousen begins with a tale about a
conversation with Bella Dodd, a former Communist. This is

a nice touch. The reader is made to see Skousen as one
familiar with security matters and with important people. The
purported conversation with Dodd, for which there is no proof,
points the reader to the main idea of the book — that there is
“a conspiratorial control center higher and stronger than either
Moscow or Peiping.” Skousen’s “credentials” are thus implied
— his FBI background, his knowledge of the state of mind of
J. Edgar Hoover, and of subversive actions in government,
and finally his sensational discovery of who has been behind

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everything. Before the average reader ever gets to read a
word of Quigley he already knows what Quigley will say and
is left with no doubts at all that Quigley is a front rank, high-up
member of a top-secret, malevolent conspiracy.

But the Quigley that Skousen has invented (or rather appropriated
from the John Birch Society) is not the real Quigley at all. Skousen’s
picture of Quigley as an elite member of a criminal conspiracy who
is now willing to tell the inside story is unprincipled fabrication and
a clear piece of deceit. Unless Skousen had planted in the reader’s
mind his fantasy about Quigley writing a book “to expose world-wide
conspiracy and disclose many of its most secret operations” (p. 4),
it would never occur to a reader of Tragedy and Hope that Quigley
was anything but the author of a textbook on recent world history in
which some account is offered of the political activities of financial
capitalism.

Suppose that one accepts the tale of super-conspiracy as told
by Skousen, what is one to do about it? Once we know about the
Establishment, what then? Skousen feels that it is now possible “to
mobilize a formidable wave of hard-core resistance to the whole
super-structure of world-wide conspiracy” (p. 117). Remember, the
world-wide conspiracy he is talking about is financial capitalism.
“The future task is political in nature. Essentially, it is a matter of
methodically and deliberately uniting the vast resources of political
power at the grass roots level and ‘throwing the rascals out’” (p. 1 1 7).
He also claims that “it is essential that one of the national political
parties be renovated and reconstructed as a base of operations. .
.” (p. 120). “This situation [the collectivization process] is likely to
continue,” Skousen tells us “until a sufficient number of Americans
become angrily aroused and rise from the grass roots to seize control
of one or both of the major parties” (p. 57). Notice the operative words
“angrily aroused,” “rise,” “seize control.”

After the “political puppets of the international network” of financial

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capital are eliminated and replaced and “the political climate has
been improved we have a tremendous amount of restructuring to do”
(p. 118, italics added). What will we restructure? “The conspiratorial
enemy’s power base must be eliminated” (p. 1 1 8, italics added). The
power base of the bankers and their henchmen is, of course, their
property and wealth; Skousen wants it eliminated. The economic
order must be reconstructed, for “the whole monolithic, inter-locking
power structure of international finance is in flagrant violation of the
general welfare of the people. . (p. 118). In the name of the people,
we should eliminate the power base (that is, the wealth) or finance
capital. “This mammoth concentration of economic power is in direct
opposition to the traditional American precept that, unless it has been
stated otherwise, all power of every sort must remain DISPERSED
among the people. Therefore, laws must be passed so that the
nightmarish monstrosity of credit and money power which has been
rapidly gravitating into a few conspiring hands, can be dismantled”
(p. 118, italics added). These sentences seem to be a call for the
government to expropriate the wealth of the rich. Skousen’s program
is (1) to angrily arouse people to the point where they will rise and
seize control of a political party, (2) to take over the government, (3)
to use its power to eliminate the wealthy, (4) to dismantle credit and
money power, and (5) to disperse power to the people. This radical
political program is surprisingly close to the rhetoric of the New Left.

Skousen specifies some goals which can be attained, he believes,
after expropriation of the wealth and hence the power base of finance
capital. (1) This step “would allow us to liberate our captive press,
radio and TV facilities so that the people could be told what is going
on.” (2) “It would facilitate the liberation of the captive public school
system. . .” (3) “It would also facilitate the liberation of certain religious
bodies, universities, and other powerful, opinion-molding channels
which have been bought-over and corrupted by the fabulous wealth
of the network’s billion-dollar, tax-exempt foundations.” (4) “The
Federal Reserve system and the United Nations must go” (pp. 118-19;

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italics added). What does the word “liberate” mean in this context? It
certainly seems to imply wresting control from someone. Does it also
imply turning control over to someone else? To whom exactly? And
who would do this liberating? The government, perhaps?

I believe that Skousen started his career with the goal of saving
the rich from big government, but has found that the rich don’t want
his help — the rich he now discovers control big government and,
in fact, are rich partly because of big government. Now he wants
to attack the rich and especially their power base, their wealth. But
he is not the first to have it in for Capitalists and to want to save
the people from their rich masters. This is exactly the program of
various forms of socialism and communism. It is difficult to miss the
parallels between Skousen’s program and much of the rhetoric of
the New Left. But there are other instructive parallels. In Germany,
where they also once came to believe that they were oppressed
by conspiratorial bankers who also manipulated the Communists,
the program was called National Socialism. Under this program the
rich would be eliminated and power given back to the people (or so
they said), the schools would be liberated so that the truth could be
taught about die evil bankers, international ties would be eliminated,
churches would be used for national propaganda and other purposes.
Skousen also wants a political party to come to power with the express
goal of eliminating the wealth and power of the rich (what better
name for such a policy than socialism?) and this key process is to
be accomplished by national governmental action — an appropriate
descriptive title for his program would be National Socialism.

There are a hose of writers, mostly on the left, who have been
arguing that political power is in the hands of a wealthy power elite.
There is, for example, currently a split among political scientists and
sociologists between those who argue that some kind of power elite
run things and those who maintain that most everyone has some
access to power through democratic processes of decision making. I
am surprised that Skousen has apparently never heard about a power

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elite (or the influence of money in politics or of a military-industrial
complex) before he read Quigley. There is a very large literature
on these topics. Skousen could have found plenty to chew on in,
for example, Ferdinand Lundberg, The Rich and the Super-Rich: A
Study in the Power of Money Today (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1 968).

Has Cleon Skousen simply invented the utterly false, paranoid view
of politics and history advanced in The Naked Capitalist ? Carroll
Quigley informs me that for over two years the John Birch Society and
other radicals have been busy distorting the contents of his Tragedy
and Hope in order to support their own paranoid fantasy about a
super-conspiracy behind the multitude of evils in the world today.
Skousen has bought without question the dogma of the Birchers
and other radicals. He is now busy using his rhetorical powers to
charm and flatter Church members into accepting the dogmas of
his conspiracy cult. He has made an accommodation between the
gospel of Jesus Christ and, of all things, a vain and wholly absurd
worldly ideology. The immediate result of Skousen’s activity is a kind
of radical cult within the Church. He and his friends make every effort
to teach their radical political dogmas as if they were truths of the
gospel of Jesus Christ.

Recently the Saints have been plagued by those who pass around
outlandish nonsense as authentic prophecies of John Taylor, and by
others who want to mobilize the Saints into Neighborhood Emergency
Teams. The Church has had to settle accounts with both groups. The
effect of The Naked Capitalist is likewise to direct the attention of the
Saints away from the gospel and to form a cult. The Naked Capitalist
sets brother against brother. It divides the Saints into angry, hostile
camps, as is evidenced by its impact on students at Brigham Young
University, where it is now being used by certain religion teachers as
a compendium to the Scriptures. Such a radical and false ideology,
no matter how cleverly packaged and rationalized, does not teach
us to love our neighbors or forgive others; it does not open us to the
sanctifying effects of the Spirit. There is nothing edifying in its bleak

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message. Skousen’s grim tale of evil conspiracy is not the gospel.
Nor is the gospel consistent with the idea that the Saints should be
preparing for an aggressive, hostile onslaught against some Enemy
Super-Conspiracy. There is no reason for us to put our faith — not
even a little of our faith — in some worldly ideology or some radical
political program of man.

The Lord has warned the Saints to avoid secret combinations (see
Ether 8:19, 22-6); we are not told to start our own secret combination
to counter the evils we see or think we see in the world. We are not
to follow the pattern set by this world; our politics should be of an
entirely different kind; our Kingdom is not of this world. We are not
commissioned to win this world for the Lord by joining some seedy
and unseemly political mass movement like that offered by the New
Left or the Radical Right. No conspiracy, not even a Skousen-type
Super-Conspiracy, can possibly frustrate the Kingdom of God; the
Saints need not fear the corruption of this world if they keep their
eyes and hearts on the Master.

Brigham Young gave us some good advice as to how we as partakers
in the Lord’s priesthood should deal with political questions: “Let no
Religious test be required or the Holy influence and Power of the
Priesthood be brought to bear in any Political question. If the inherent
merits of all such matters will not furnish argument sufficient for all
necessary purposes, then let them go; for it is better that the whole
Political fabric, corrupt as we know it to be, should totter and go to
destruction, than for our Saints to be offended.” Brigham Young
warned us not to permit the trivial matter of this world’s politics to
influence us in the least and added: “and never, no never! no never!!
again drag Priesthood into Political gentile warfare.” (Letter, July 20,
1 849.) In spite of such prophetic warning the conspiracy cult thrives.

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QUIGLEY'S RESPONSE

Carroll Quigley

Thank you for the opportunity to read The Naked Capitalist and
Midg-ley’s review of it. I think his review is very perceptive, and there
is very little I can add to it.

Midgley is correct in his basic statement that Skousen has simply
taken extended passages from my book, in violation of copyright, and
put them together in terms of his own assumptions and preconceptions
to make a picture very different from my own. Skousen is apparently
a political agitator; I am an historian. My book merely tried to give an
account of what happened in the world in the early part of the 20th
century. I did a good deal of independent research on it, much of
it in places which did not attract Skousen’s attention at all (such as
French economic history, and economic history in general). The book
was published five years ago. On the whole, except perhaps for my
section on Red China, it has stood the challenge of later information
fairly well. The chapter on “Germany From Kaiser to Hitler” has just
been re-published by Houghton Mifflin in a book entitled Why Hitler?

Midgley has pointed out the chief distortions of my materials in
Skousen’s book. My picture of “Financial capitalism” said that it was
prevalent in the period 1880-1933. Skousen quotes these dates in
several places (p. 14), yet he insists that these organizations are still
running everything. I said clearly that they were very powerful, but
also said that they could not control the situation completely and were
unable to prevent things they disliked, such as income and inheritance
taxes. Moreover, I thought I had made it clear that the control of
bankers was replaced by that of self-financing or government-financed
corporations, many of them in the West and South-west, in oil or in
aero-space, and I saw a quite different alignment of American politics
since 1950 (pp. 1245-1247). Skousen implies that financial capitalism
was not only omnipotent but immoral, both of which I denied.

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Most notably, Skousen asks in his foreword: “Why do some of the
richest people in the world support communism and socialism?”
He says that I give the answer. I never anywhere said that financial
capitalism or any of its subsidiaries sought to “support communism.”
On the contrary, I said two things which Skousen consistently ignores:
(1 ) that bankers sought to influence all shades of American political
opinion across the board from Right to Left (p. 945); and (2) that Wall
Street support of Communist groups was based on three grounds, one
of which was to “have a final veto on their publicity and possibly on
their actions, if they ever went radical” (p. 938). Morgan’s pipeline to
die Liberals (the Straights) was no more liberal than his pipeline to the
Communists (the Lamonts) was communist. Skousen simply assumes
that anyone who tries to infiltrate the communists or contributes funds
to them must be a sympathizer, but, as he must know, the FBI has
been doing this for years, as the CIA has been doing it all across the
political spectrum on American campuses in recent years.

I must say that I was surprised at the picture of myself which I found
in Skousen. Midgley is correct in his statement that I never claimed
to be an “insider” of the Eastern Establishment, as Skousen seems
to believe I was; I simply said that I knew some of these people, and
generally liked them, although I objected to some of their policies.
It seems to me that Skousen is unable to understand their point
of view, simply because he upholds what I would regard as “the
Radical Right” view that “exclusive uniformity” is the basis on which
our society should be based. My own view is that our whole Western
tradition rests, despite frequent aberrations, on what I call “inclusive
diversity.” These are the last two words of my book, and they are its
chief message, which seems to me to be one of the chief aspects
of the Christian way of life: that diverse peoples with diverse beliefs
must live together and work together in a single community, It seems
to me that the Wall Street power group sincerely held this belief; that
is why they made Harvard and other institutions they influenced so
“liberal.” They felt strongly that communists and the Soviet Union and

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other diverse peoples were in this world together and had to live and
let live in order to co-exist. It seems to me that this is what Skousen
cannot accept. His political position seems to me to be perilously
close to the “exclusive uniformity” which I see in Nazism and in the
Radical Right in this country. In fact, his position has echoes of the
original Nazi 25 point program.

Midgley says that Skousen was triggered into writing The Naked
Capitalist by my critical remarks on the Radical Right. I agree with
him. If you will look at my book (pages 146-147), you will see that
the Round Table Group, under the influence of Lionel Curtis, held
basically Christian beliefs. These were sincere. But they bungled
them greatly in application. Perhaps it was intellectual arrogance to
expect to “build the Kingdom of God here upon this earth,” and they
certainly failed disastrously. No one knows this better than I do. But
I still cannot condemn them, and I cannot see that the American
Radical Right has anything better to offer. I think the Round Table
effort failed because they tried to work through government, rather
than through each person’s individual effort in his private life.

SKOUSEN'S REPLY

\N. Cleon Skousen

In The Naked Capitalist I simply quoted extensive passages from
Quigley which described the amazing extent to which a secret
financial network gained control over major nations throughout the
world. Quigley was very clear and precise in the way he presented his
material, and I felt it was a most important contribution. It is regrettable
that he now feels compelled to retreat to a more obscure position.

Quigley is unhappy with me for saying that he wrote his book as an
“insider.” Yet after affirming the existence of this vast, secret power
structure of the super-rich he writes: “I know of the operations of this

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network because I have studied it for twenty years, and was permitted
for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret
record. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for
much of my life, been close to it and many of its instruments.” Is
there any other historian who has been given access to the secret
records of the international bankers’ establishment? I know of none.
Nor do I know of any historian who has been close enough to the
“instruments” of the Establishment to reveal so many facts concerning
its inside operations.

One of the most astonishing points raised in Quigley’s critique was
his statement that, “I never anywhere said that financial capitalism
sought to support communism.” Actually, this is something he stressed
very strongly in his book. “Our concern at the moment is with the
links between Wall Street and the Left, especially the Communists.

. . he goes on to describe how J. P. Morgan’s partner, Thomas
Lamont, and his family became the “sponsors and financial angels
to almost a score of the extreme Left organizations, including the
Communist Party itself.” He cites other instances, one of which is the
Institute of Pacific Relations (pp. 946ff.). He says, “The influence of
the Communists in IPR is well established, but the patronage of Wall
Street is less well known.” He then provides an extremely interesting
account of the relationship between Wall Street leaders and their
heavily financed forces of subversion which operated in the IPR
during that period. Of course, Congressional hearings thoroughly
supported my position. So did the Attorney General’s investigation
in the Amerasia Case. Why is Quigley now attempting to deny his
former position?

Both in his book and his critique, Quigley exhibits a very strange
attitude toward those who have views which differ from his own. He
is very disturbed by the “petty bourgeoisie” in America who have
“middle-class values” and are therefore opposed to what I believe is
the socialized, one-world society which is being imposed upon them.
Obviously Quigley is talking about those who oppose what he believes

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in. But why must he identify them with the Nazis? Smearing is a tactic
used by those who have run out of substantive arguments. Quigley
does the same thing in his response to The Naked Capitalist. He
says my position “has echoes of the original Nazi 25 point program.”
In what way? He never gets around to telling us.

I have concluded to attribute Midgley’s treatment of my book to an
adventure in speed reading. Certainly he is a better scholar than
the contents of this critique would indicate. He must have written his
comments under tremendous pressure and at a time when his sketchy
scanning of my book caused him to suffer a trauma of emotional
inflammation. I would have preferred to respond to a critique of
scholarly, penetrating analysis. That might have been useful to both
of us, and I would have welcomed it.

My greatest disappointment in Midgley is his obvious lack of
intellectual curiosity. In his anxiety to get out his polemical shotgun
and win the debate, he completely missed some rather exciting
issues which are presented in The Naked Capitalist. Some of these
have come into prominence just since this book was published.
An example of this has been the rather sensational repudiation of
the 1968 Republican platform by President Nixon, which my book
anticipated. Another has been the submitting of two bills in Congress
to retire the privately owned stock of the Federal Reserve System,
which coincides with the recommendations in The Naked Capitalist.
This book also predicted the new China policy with Kissinger carrying
the ball for the power network which initiated the policy. Midgley
appears to have missed all of this along with a dozen other issues
of equal importance.

In the opening portion of his review, Midgley pokes fun at
Skousen’s “demonology” which is supposed to “strip bare the ‘Global
Establishment’ who secretly plan, plot and subversively conspire to
rule the world.” As part of his fun, Midgley says, “Since die Capitalist
Super-conspiracy is partly an affair of bankers, Skousen heads the list
of conspirators with their names: The Rothschilds, Barings, Lazards,

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Paul Warburg, J.P. Morgan. . . This illustrates the superficiality of
his reading. This series of names is not my list at all. It is Quigley’s.
How did Midgley miss this?

Midgley goes on to say: “Skousen has striven to find a link between
capitalism and communism.” This is not true. The link between wealthy
Capitalists and the Communists has been one of the startling facts
growing out of government investigations for forty years or more.
The great value of Quigley’s book is that he verifies with names and
organizations what government investigators and private researchers
have been saying all along. He further clarifies the reason for the
Wall Street-Left Wing link by telling how the heirs to some of the
multi-billion dollar fortunes of the world became converted to John
Ruskin’s version of socialist collectivism. We are dealing with
fabulously wealthy men who are out to restructure the world along
Plato’s pattern of socialist collectivism. Surely Midgley must have
read Plato sufficiently to appreciate what a tightly stratified class
structure John Ruskin was advocating.

Midgley lists fourteen points which he failed to find in Quigley’s book
even though I cited the pages where he could find them:

1 . Midgley says he could find nothing to indicate Quigley was writing
as an “insider.” This one we have already covered.

2 & 1 3. Midgley objected to my deduction that Quigley probably felt
safe in telling the Establishment story because of Quigley’s feeling
that it was now too late for ordinary Americans to organize and turn
back the tide. Rather than quibble I will simply refer the reader to
pages 979-80 of Quigley’s book.

3. What is the meaning behind the title, Tragedy and Hope ? I have
already demonstrated that Quigley sees tragedy in returning to the
fundamentals of the founding fathers. He sees hope in a one-world
amalgamation of the United States and the Soviet Union. He calls it
“inclusive diversity.” In his critique of The Naked Capitalist Quigley
provides a definition for this strange term. He says it means “that
diverse people with diverse beliefs must live together and work

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together in a single community.” Pushing universities toward the
liberal Left, accommodating Communists, promoting and financing
their clandestine operations, all this is to bring us to what Quigley
thinks the Wall Street power group sincerely wanted — a “single
community” where people would be required to “live together and work
together.” All of this smacks of compulsion, the loss of Constitutional
freedoms and deceptive, police state tactics.

4. Midgley calls my reference to a prophecy in the Book of Revelation
(13:15-17) merely “some imagery.” This is John’s prophecy that
just prior to the Second Coming (which he describes immediately
afterwards) there will be a great “beast” rise to power which will
create an economic monopoly in which “no man might buy or sell”
without its mark. Moroni talks about a similar “secret combination” in
the latter days (Ether 8:23). Midgley can disparage such prophecies
if he wishes, but it seems to me that what he dismisses as merely
“some imagery” is taking on tire flesh and bone of ominous reality.

5. Midgley denies that there is anything in Quigley’s book to indicate
there is an international financial combine which is pushing the world
into a collectivized society. To come to this conclusion, Midgley had to
ignore at least half of the “forty pages” which I quoted from Quigley.

6 & 10. Midgley says I cannot quote Quigley as my star witness
and then criticize him for trying to cover up the consequences of the
conspiracy which the Establishment has been financing. But why
not, if it is true?

7. This item deals with the purposes of the Wall Street cabal in
financing Left-Wing collectivist groups and has already been
answered.

8 & 9. Midgley says it is “totally false” for me to suggest that Quigley
believes that the Establishment is moving toward the collectivist Left
in order to replace traditional capitalism with a world-wide socialist
society. He says Quigley presents no such picture in Tragedy and
Hope. This leads me to suspect that perhaps Midgley has not read
Plato after all. Maybe he had no idea what Quigley was talking about

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when he traced the ideological gestation of the secret society to John
Ruskin’s Platonically inspired dream of a one-world socialist society.

1 1 . Midgley wants to know where Quigley makes any bold declaration
that the London-Wall Street network was involved in attacking the
foundation of the American culture. Communists have as their basic
objective not only the political conquest of America but the total
destruction of its Judaic-Christian culture. I see no difficulty whatever
in establishing that Quigley has been well aware of the attack the
Establishment has been making on tire foundations of the American
culture.

1 2. This item raises the complaint that there is nothing in Quigley’s
book to show that tire Eastern Establishment is supporting the
Communists and pushing toward a globalist union. As we have shown,
Quigley specifically verified this point in his review when he carefully
defined their goal as “inclusive diversity” — a single society where
Americans and Communists must live and work together.

14. Midgley declares that since The Naked Capitalist is so lacking
in supportive evidence, it must be written off as more “clever” than
“cogent.” This determination is something I am perfectly willing to
leave to the intelligence of the readers.

Finally, Midgley was disturbed by my suggestion that the people
take back from government the illegal authority it has expropriated
to itself. Although I specifically stated that this should be achieved
through established political procedures, Midgley equates me with
those he calls the “hysterical radicals.” When I suggested that the
international bankers’ network be deprived of the power they exercise
through the Federal Reserve system, Midgley could not visualize
anything in this suggestion but a mass appropriation of their wealth
by government. This was purely an assumption. He concluded that
Skousen has joined the “New Left.” The rest of my suggestions were
offered in this same spirit, but were translated by Midgley into ominous
political monsters ranging all the way from revolutionary communism
to Fascist Nazi dictatorship.

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My reference to the power elite among the Capitalists led Midgley to
expostulate, “I am quite surprised that Skousen has apparently never
heard about a power elite . . . before he read Quigley.” In my book I
mentioned that I had known about the secret power structure for over
thirty years but had been waiting for someone on the inside to tell us
why these wealthy Capitalists would feel there was some advantage
in supporting the Communists and Socialists. Once Quigley explained
the background and influence of John Ruskin and spelled out the
ramifications of the “secret society,” it began to make sense. At least
to most people. Midgley is one of the exceptions. He suggests that
those who believe in the conspiracy must be “cultists.” So far as I
know, this would include all of the living prophets and all of their
immediate predecessors. I doubt whether Midgley would really want
to take on anything as formidable as that.

MIDGLEY'S REJOINDER

Louis Midgley

I had rather hoped that Skousen, upon discovering that his Quigley
thesis was false, would have had the courage to admit his error,
recall his book, disband his cult, stop his radical political agitation,
and perhaps even apologize to Carroll Quigley, whose book he
has so badly misrepresented and mistreated. Aside from whatever
assistance my review could be to the many decent, concerned Saints
who have bought the book, I saw the review as a call to repentance
to Skousen. I tried to present my objections in a scholarly, forceful
but still kindly way. Now it appears that Skousen is not prepared to
face up to the fact that his book rests on falsehood. Instead, he has
chosen to dissemble and pretend that he has published the truth.

Skousen’s reply plays down the more sensationalistic and lurid
aspects of his own thesis and, wherever possible, diverts attention
to other “exciting issues.” The new toned-down version sometimes

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contradicts the original. For example, I chided him for not knowing
much earlier that wealthy people, including bankers, have power and
for having waited thirty long years for someone to “let the secret out.”
He brushed this objection aside by insisting that he mentions that he
had always known about the secret power structure, but had merely
been waiting for someone on the inside to tell us why these wealthy
Capitalists were doing what they were doing. This contradicts the
version actually found on page 4 of his book and the letter he initially
sent with the book. There he wrote: “Our main problem has been
to discover precisely WHO [his emphasis] was behind some of the
insane things which have been happening.”

The reader who carefully compares my fourteen objections with his
responses will find that he has failed in every case to answer them.
However, I must draw special attention to some features of his reply.

1 . Skousen charges me with having challenged the accuracy of the
long quotations he has taken from Quigley. That was not my point
at all. All those thousands of words are quoted accurately, as far as
I know. What I complained about were the inferences, summaries
and conclusions about Quigley that are fallacious, inaccurate, and
unsupported by textual evidence.

2. Quigley tells us that the title of his book points to the tragedy
of war and the hope that mankind will turn from hatred to Christian
love and thereby learn to live with others with whom we differ (see
pp. 131 Off.). Unless we begin to manifest love, he maintains, we
will destroy ourselves in senseless war. This is what he means by
the phrase “inclusive diversity.” Therefore he can say “that diverse
peoples with diverse beliefs must live together in a single community.”
Skousen has pounced on the harmless word “must,” inferring from it
that Quigley wants “compulsion, the loss of Constitutional freedoms
and deceptive police state tactics,” collectivism, globalism, and “one-
world amalgamation of the United States and the Soviet Union.” All
these tenable things are inferred from the harmless little word Quigley
used to express his belief in the necessity of loving our neighbors.

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3. The only “evidence” Skousen offers to show that the wealthy men
he so despises are in favor of globalism, socialism, communism,
collectivism, etc., is that Quigley says that John Ruskin lectured to
bankers at Oxford in 1870. Skousen then quotes someone to show
that Ruskin read Plato and that Plato was a mean totalitarian (pp.
26ff). From this he concludes that bankers are totalitarians who plot
to bring about communism, socialism and a host of other evils. There
is something seriously wrong with the argument that contemporary
bankers and other wealthy men support communism and other evils
simply because someone has written that Ruskin once read Plato.

4. Skousen ends his reply by arguing that by rejecting his cult of
conspiracy I am placing myself in opposition to “all the living prophets
and all of their immediate predecessors.” As a matter of fact, I do
believe that there are numerous, often competing conspiracies in
this world. And I am in complete accord with the frequent prophetic
judgments brought against the vain and hurtful nonsense of this world.
I know the truth of the prophetic warnings against various kinds of
radical political activities, including communism and birchism. But
there has never been one word from our prophets warning us of
Skousen’s myth of a bankers’ conspiracy. Instead, the prophets tell
us that we have nothing to fear from the wicked in this world if we
hold fast to the iron rod of the gospel. But that involves not following
Skousen-type programs, which fight the worldly wicked with their
own tool — hate — rather than return love for the evil that abounds
in this world. Obviously, I have placed myself in opposition to such
“living prophets” as Robert Welch and many other such pariahs,
but that is another matter. Perhaps Skousen accepts such men as
“living prophets”; in any case he has certainly attempted to affect an
accommodation between their strange message and the gospel of
Jesus Christ.

Thousands of Brigham Young University students are currently being
indoctrinated in the “gospel” of The Naked Capitalist by Skousen
and a handful of his disciples who teach “religion” classes. Students

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and faculty who do not accept the Skousen-type “gospel” are written
off as apostates and enemies of the Church. This is a mean game.
Wherever Skousen and his disciples are able to spread their cult we
see hostile camps, disunity in die Church and loss of conviction in
the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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DISSENT: DO WE NEED IT?

Address given on August 24, 1970, at The National War College and later
published in Perspectives in Defense Management (January 1971), pp. 21-

30.

Perspectives in Defense Management
January 1971, pp. 21-30

This article was edited for publication here with the author’s
approval from a transcript of his presentation to the Industrial
College of the Armed Forces on 24 August 1 970

DISSENT: DO WE NEED IT?

By: Carroll Quigley

I will not attempt this morning to deal with the whole subject of dissent
in the United States. Instead, I propose to deal with it from a single
point of view — my own, of course — and to call your attention to
some widely held ideas which I regard as erroneous.

First of all, allegiance and dissent, it seems to me, are opposite
sides of the same coin. We cannot have organized society without
allegiance. A society cannot continue to exist without loyalty. But, I
would further add, a society cannot continue to exist that is incapable
of reforming itself, and the prerequisite to reform is dissent.

Allegiance is absolutely vital. But so is dissent. To me, allegiance
means devotion to symbols and organizational structures, both of
which are necessary in any society. Dissent, it seems to me, is the
opposite side of the coin. It implies a critical approach to the symbols
and to organizational structures of society.

I don’t think either allegiance or dissent has anything to do,
necessarily, with loyalty and disloyalty. A dissenter can be loyal

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and usually is. Conversely, a person who has allegiance might be
fundamentally disloyal. I’m sure that must be confusing, so let me
explain.

I said allegiance is devotion to an organizational structure and
symbols. But in any society, any community of people, organizational
structures and at least the meaning of symbols inevitably change as
a result of critical re-examination of the services they actually perform
for the community. Because the community must be preserved,
no matter what changes take place in organizational structures or
symbols.

Loyalty and disloyalty, I would say, focus on the community itself,
rather than on its symbols and structure — the community as an
ongoing group of people working together for their basic way of
life. Allegiance is more superficial and is never an end in itself. It
is important only to the degree that it supports the things which
a community must have, such as political stability and, above all,
security.

My examination of history shows that communities can live securely
through severe political instability and turmoil. In fact, communities
have sometimes reached the pinnacle of their political and military
power during the most turbulent periods of their history. France, for
example, has never experienced more internal violence, instability,
and ideological conflict than during the years immediately following
the great revolution of 1789 — the very years in which her armies
overran all the major countries of Europe and Napoleon carved out
the largest dominion that Europe had seen since the days of the
Roman Empire.

But, in the 19th century, allegiance and dissent had a somewhat
different meaning. We had then, for the first time in our history, political
communities in which everyone was a member and every subject
was an active citizen. For that reason, we expected everyone not
only to be loyal but to give allegiance.

Fortunately, in the 19th century we also permitted dissent. The

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connection between universal political participation, the citizen Army,
and democracy — essentially 1 9th century institutions — is very close.

I think in the future we may move away from all of these. Almost
certainly we will move away from the mass citizen-Army, and I think
we will also, to some extent, move away from democracy. I think we
will increasingly come not to expect allegiance from certain segments
of the population, perhaps substantial segments.

Now in the 19th century, we tended to think of allegiance, loyalty,
and dissent with reference to the governmental system. Allegiance
and loyalty were owed to the government; dissent was a threat to
the government. In other words, the insecurity and instability that we
were concerned with were the kind that might undermine or overthrow
the government.

Today I do not think that is the issue. I do not think we have to
contend with dissent or even disloyalty capable of overthrowing
the United States Government. The danger comes rather from the
capability, which almost any dissenting group has, of sabotaging the
complicated organizational and operational systems through which
our society functions — the telephone system, for example. As you
know, we are likely to have a critical fuel problem next winter. We might
pull through without too much difficulty if everyone cooperates, but a
few determined saboteurs could make a lot of trouble. The reason for
this is that we have built up all these complicated, interlocking, and
bureaucratic organizational structures which are highly vulnerable
to disruption by people who are disloyal to the system, or even by
dissenters who merely want to see it reformed.

Notice another distinction that I am making here. Dissent is something
inside a person; it is ideas, feeling, attitudes. What a person does
is something else. Take urban violence. That is action, something
that people do. But what concerns me about dissent is why these
people resort to violence. What makes people who are normally
decent, restrained, and well-behaved suddenly flare up and throw
rocks through windows, burn office records, pour blood on draft files,

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and generally behave like savages? What causes dissent to lead to
violent action?

This violence, let me repeat, does not necessarily lead to revolution,
a threat to the government. I don’t believe that violent dissent today
is at all likely to lead to a takeover of the Government by dissenting
groups or even to a demand for drastic changes in our society. But
sabotage and violence by dissenting groups can make life very
difficult for a large part of our population. In other words, we have the
paradoxical situation in which the government is sound and strong
while we, people in general, are insecure and vulnerable. Here in
Washington, as you know, many people are afraid to go downtown
at night. So the theaters are half-empty and even the restaurants are
in trouble. All because the anger and despair resulting from social ills
has overflowed into violent action which disrupts normal processes
of living without really threatening the political structure itself.

No society can stand still. Its institutions must constantly adjust and
evolve, and periodically undergo reform, because the needs they
are supposed to serve are themselves constantly changing. And
institutions cannot grow and reform unless the people whose needs
they fail to serve, or serve badly, can make their dissatisfaction felt
in short, unless they can actively dissent from things as they are. If
dissent is stifled and denied redress, it builds up like a head of steam.
Many people assume that dissent and the demand for reform are the
first step toward revolution. They are mistaken. My study of history
shows pretty generally that revolutions do not come from dissent.
They come from a failure to reform, which leads to breakdown. It is
quite true that misguided reforms which fail to attack real problems
may also result in breakdown. But dissent, and reform responding to
dissent, do not lead to revolution. They lead away from it.

There are two kinds of dissent, just as there are two kinds of
allegiance: intellectual and emotional. They are quite different. Much
of our concern lately, in the government and on the campuses, has
been with intellectual dissent. We worry about alien ideologies and

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revolutionary philosophies, like anarchism. Now I will not say this is a
waste of time. But I do believe that far too much time has been spent
on it. Intellectual dissent is not the real problem today, particularly
in the United States. The real problem today is emotional dissent.

The two are not the same thing — they may well be opposites.
People’s emotional makeup — the values, needs, and ideas about
which they feel strongly and emotionally are often quite different from
their intellectual makeup, their rational idea systems. The values that
they profess and hold to intellectually may have little to do with their
more basic needs, those which inflame their emotions, often without
their really knowing why.

Now, action — what people do — usually results from their emotional
rather than their intellectual makeup, from their strongly felt but
sometimes only dimly understood needs. Afterwards, they justify
what they did in terms of an explicit ideology, through the process
of rationalization.

I am going to put a diagram on the blackboard here of what I think a
human being might look like. And instead of saying man has a body
and a soul (which is dualistic thinking) I am going to take a tripartite
approach body, emotions, and reason. Reason is concerned with
thinking, so I’ll put a “T” here. That is the realm of ideology. The
emotions are “F” — concerned with feeling. That is associated with
what I call outlook, which is people’s value systems, the basis on
which they classify things and experiences as good or bad.

Incidentally, this affects other kinds of classification, too. You see
someone coming down the street, and you classify this person male
or female. That is, you did until recently. That makes you laugh, but
it is not a trivial matter. When people no longer wish to be obviously
male or female, but wish to be obviously neither, clearly there are
rather deep-seated emotions involved. These people are expressing
attitudes, in a spirit of defiance, which are alien to my generation
but which we cannot afford to ignore because a substantial group
of the society seems to be turning in that direction. We will have to

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look behind the strange behavior and try to determine what are the
attitudes and needs that cause it.

Then we have the body, which provides the means for action. Talk
comes from ideology but action comes from outlook. In one of my
earlier lectures here, on Russia and Communist ideology, I argued
that what the Russian people do is largely a result of the Russian
outlook, rooted deep in their history, going back long before 1917.
Russia also has an ideology, Marxism, which was imported from
Western Europe. This ideology is not at all suited to their outlook,
formed from their ancient traditions, and it certainly doesn’t jibe with
the character and aims of their revolution. But because the leaders of
their revolution were Marxist, they had to rationalize it in terms of the
Marxist ideology, which was intellectually quite difficult and doesn’t
make much sense even to some Marxists.

Action is what matters. A society is fully justified in putting restraints
on action. I think it is also justified in putting some restraint on talk
because talk can excite people to action. But I do not think a society
is justified in putting restraints on what people think or feel. Action
is what matters.

Therefore, feelings, which are the cause of action, need to be
understood. Ideology is much less important because it usually leads
only to talk, not action. People who talk the most violently are seldom
the ones who commit violence. My observation has been, particularly
among students, that those who commit the violence are the docile
types whom you would not expect to even knock over a glass of
water at dinner. They are the ones who get themselves arrested for
throwing bricks at policemen or calling them fascist pigs. The reason
they behave in this way, I believe, is related to the fact that they are
habitually unassertive and docile. In a certain kind of exciting situation,
they suddenly feel a compulsion to assert that they are somebody,
that they can do something, that they can make people notice them.

How do people come to this? The explanation, it seems to me, must
lie in their whole past, their whole experience up to that moment. We

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cannot know this in detail, of course. We can only say that what a
person does is the consequence of everything that happened to him,
especially while he was growing up.

But for our society as a whole, I think we can say that there is a
tendency for people to act in certain ways on the basis of their class
origin. Let me put up another diagram here, showing the American
class structure and the kinds of outlook and feelings that are typical
of the various classes.

America is a middle-class society. The dominant group is the middle
class; its values and ideology dominate our society. I would say,
moreover, that the feelings of the American people, by and large, are
middle class. Now what I mean by “middle class” is a whole series
of things. For example, middle-class people have future preference.
They are prepared to make all kinds of sacrifices in the present for
the sake of a hypothetical future benefit. You are willing to spend
10 months of study here because you think this will help you in the
future. We call that future preference.

Not everybody has future preference. There are whole societies
which do not have it. Most people in black Africa have present
preference. They are mainly concerned with the present moment.
Students who rebel against middle-class parents do so not merely
by letting their hair grow, by dressing like their girl friends, who in turn
dress like them, and so on, but more fundamentally by abandoning
future preference and adopting present preference. They live from
moment to moment in what we call an existential way.

Middle-class people are extremely insecure. They do not seek their
security through the development of a stable, mature personality,
sufficiently strong and autonomous to cope with life’s problems.
Young people today, and indeed an increasing proportion of the
American people, tend to stereotype patterns of behavior with which
they react to particular types of situations in particular settings —
at home, at work, at school. In effect, they try to have a role, like
a costume, for each situation. They may have a wide assortment

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of these roles, which they can play very skillfully, but they lack the
integrated, independent personality that would enable them to deal
confidently and serenely with any problem that confronts them. They
are basically insecure.

To a large extent, too, the American middle class has sought security
in material possessions. This is the root of the acquisitive society. The
middle-class family wants a nice house with a large lawn, which takes
all Saturday afternoon to mow, and a couple of automobiles — these
are the visible symbols of success. And when they get them, they
want more; they are insatiable. Their material demands are infinitely
expandable. They finish off’ the basement into a rumpus room; then
they build a swimming pool; then they buy a motor boat; then they
get a cottage down on the bay so they won’t have to come back and
forth. This goes on and on and on.

This is the American way of life. Many societies have a different way.
Certain classes in our society have a different way. But our society is
still mostly middle class. And increasingly it has become divided into
two segments: middle class proper and lower middle class. The lower
middle class is petty bourgeois. These people seek their security in
status; status in an organizational structure. They try to find a place
for themselves in an organization which has a hierarchy in which they
can count on moving up automatically simply by surviving.

Some people still think that most Americans are active, assertive,
aggressive, self-reliant people who need no help from anyone,
especially the Government, and achieve success as individuals by
competing freely with each other. That may have been true 1 00 years
ago. It isn’t true today. Today more and more of us are petty bourgeois
who snuggle down in a hierarchical bureaucracy where advancement
is assured merely by keeping the body warm and not breaking the
rules; it doesn’t matter whether it is education or the Armed Services
or a big corporation or the Government. Notice that high school
teachers are universally opposed to merit pay. They are paid on the
basis of their degrees and years of teaching experience. Or consider

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the professor. He gets his Ph. D. by writing a large dissertation on
a small subject, and he hopes to God he never meets anyone else
who knows anything about that subject. If he does, they don’t talk
about it; they talk about the weather or baseball.

So our society is becoming more and more a society of white-
collar clerks on many levels, including full professors. They live for
retirement and find their security through status in structures. In
addition, we still have some of the old middle class who are making
a lot of money, mainly in entrepreneurial activities.

Up at the top is also another small group, the aristocrats or quasi-
aristocrats. These are the people who made it so long ago — a
generation or two or three — that their position in society is almost
guaranteed. They don’t worry about what people think; they don’t worry
about appearances. They may live in a rundown house and drive an
old dilapidated car and wear seedy clothes. Eleanor Roosevelt was
one of them. Do you young people remember her? She never worried
about what anyone thought; she never cared how she was dressed;
she paid no attention to style. These are the aristocrats. They have
past preference because their own or their families’ achievements in
the past are the source of their inner security. They are thus able to
deal with the present and the future confidently, without feeling that
they must prove something to themselves or others.

I confess to some liking and respect for this group, probably because,
as a New Englander, I have been exposed to a fair number of them.
In my class at college, for example, there was a boy named Robert
Saltonstall. Everybody respected him because he had integrity,
he was dependable, he was unselfish. Aristocrats are not much
concerned with themselves They don’t try to impress anyone. Often
they are do-gooders, the sincere kind. If they have money, they often
concern themselves with the arts, social welfare, reform, betterment,
volunteer work. Many have been big in politics — the Roosevelts,
the Rockefellers, the Kennedys. They are the complete antithesis,
in every way, of the petty bourgeoisie down here, who, of course,

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hate them intensely.

Below the petty bourgeoisie are the blue-collar workers. They have
present preference. They don’t worry about the stock market or the
arts or making a killing in real estate or helping others. Their overriding
interest is in spectator sports. Every game in the football season,
every day of the World Series, every night of the fights — they are
glued to the TV. They don’t try to impress anybody. They don’t dress
up. They don’t go out much.

In the old days, many of these workers were true craftsmen. They
served their apprenticeships, learned their trade well, worked hard,
took great pride in their work, whether as a plumber, a painter, a
carpenter, a mechanic, or whatever. Today, with assembly line mass-
production techniques, no individual worker can be held responsible
for his work. If the front wheels fall off the 1 969 Fords, you can’t pin it
on any worker. Conversely, no worker can take much personal pride
in a car whose wheels don’t fall off. So in recent years the blue-collar
class has been becoming more and more petty bourgeois. They’re
after status and more pay and less responsibility.

Generally, the petty bourgeoisie hate the workers. One reason is
that many of the petty bourgeoisie do not really have status security
— bank clerks and insurance agents, for instance. People who are
really clerks in the lower levels of the white-collar class do not have
the security or the labor union protection or, in many cases, the
annual income of the blue-collar class. I know bricklayers who are
making $15,000 to $18,000 a year. I don’t know of any bank clerk
who makes that much.

Now there are still a lot of blue-collars who work only when they
feel like it. They don’t really want the money that much. They’d rather
enjoy themselves. Present preference, you see. Instead of salting
it away for the kids or for retirement, they knock off work a couple
of days in the week and go to the beach or just sit around and drink
beer and talk to the neighbors and watch the fights on TV.

At the very bottom, we have what Marx called the lumpenproletariat.

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The Marxists hated them because they were the oppressed working
people who were too stupid to realize they were oppressed. They
had no revolutionary spirit, no self-discipline. The middle and lower
middle classes are self-disciplined — you have to give them that.
You cannot have future preference without self-discipline. Future
preference means that, for the sake of some future benefit, you have
restrained yourself from indulging your present inclinations. You
restrict intercourse with your wife because you are worried about 9
months from now.

The people at the bottom don’t think ahead even 9 weeks or 9 days
from now. This is the culture of poverty, in the ghettos and the rural
slums of Appalachia and the South and the Southwest. It includes
blacks, and whites, and Puerto Ricans, and Chicanos, and many
other ethnics. These people live in shattered neighborhoods and
shattered families and shattered cultures. Oscar Lewis and many
other writers have described them in detail.

There are two other groups, the religious and the intellectual. Now, a
person who studies or reads books or talks learnedly isn’t necessarily
an intellectual. An intellectual is essentially a person who believes that
truth exists in this world and that, if we work hard, we can discover
it. A scientist, or a research historian, who has such a belief would
belong to this group. I would put myself there. We study the natural
universe or human nature or human societies, observe what they do
or have done in the past, and learn more and more about why they
do what they do. The religious, on the other hand, believe that truth
exists in some other world, not this one. Furthermore, they are pretty
sure they have already discovered it.

Dissent is found in all of these class groupings, and it is different
in each one. There are dissenters among the aristocrats. That’s
one reason why the petty bourgeoisie hate them: they think they
are Communists, spending foundation money to finance subversive
projects and undermine the American way of life. The people in the
lower middle class object to anyone or anything different. Anyone

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who is different is a threat. Many of them are WASP’s (White Anglo-
Saxon Protestants) but there are a good many Irish, Italians, and other
nationalities, too. To them, intellectuals are dangerous; aristocrats are
dangerous; workers are dangerous; the ghetto poor are dangerous;
even religious people, like Father Berrigan, are dangerous.

The dissent that we find in the aristocratic class is the dissent of
people who are troubled by our social problems and who feel that they
should devote their lives to remedying them. Formerly they might try
to improve society by founding a symphony orchestra or a university
or a foundation to finance sending blacks to college. (A black today
can get into Harvard and have his way paid even if he has much
poorer grades than your son or my son, who probably couldn’t get in
and certainly couldn’t have his way paid.) This group at the top has
influence far out of proportion to their numbers.

Many religious people, too, are dissenters. Hardly any of them are
Communists or congenital revolutionaries. Mostly they are emotionally
hung up on the oppression of the Negro, or the bureaucratization of
the government, or the militarization of our society, or other problems
which they consider offensive in the sight of God. The intellectual
is a dissenter for somewhat similar reasons, except that his dissent
grows out of his immediate concern for what is going on in this world.
Pollution, poverty, war, and other evils he denounces as offensive to
reason, equity, morality, or, in many cases, simply to the ideal of an
efficient and orderly society.

I put the intellectuals and the religious on the sides of my diagram,
incidentally, to show that people can enter these groups from any
level of the structure. For the other groups, the movement is generally
up or down into the immediately adjacent group.

There is a change underway, however. Our society used to be a
ladder on which people generally climbed upward. More and more
now we are going to a planetary structure, in which the great dominant
lower middle class, the class that determines our prevailing values
and organizational structures in education, government, and most of

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society, are providing recruits for the other groups — sideways, up,
and even down, although the movement downward is relatively small.

As the workers become increasingly petty bourgeois and as middle-
class bureaucratic and organizational structures increasingly govern
all aspects of our society, our society is increasingly taking on the
characteristics of the lower middle class, although the poverty culture
is also growing. The working class is not growing. Increasingly we
are doing things with engineers sitting at consoles, rather than with
workers screwing nuts on wheels. The workers are a diminishing,
segment of society, contrary to Marx’s prediction that the proletariat
would grow and grow.

I have argued elsewhere that many people today are frustrated
because we are surrounded by organizational structures and artifacts.
Only the petty bourgeoisie can find security and emotional satisfaction
in an organizational structure, and only a middle-class person can
find them in artifacts, things that men have made, such as houses,
yachts, and swimming pools. But human beings who are growing up
crave sensation and experience. They want contact with other people,
moment-to-moment, intimate contact. I’ve discovered, however, that
the intimacy really isn’t there. Young people touch each other, often
in an almost ritual way; they sleep together, eat together, have sex
together. But I don’t see the intimacy. There is a lot of action, of course,
but not so much more than in the old days, I believe, because now
there is a great deal more talk than action.

This group, the lower middle class, it seems to me, holds the key
to the future. I think probably they will win out. If they do, they will
resolutely defend our organizational structures and artifacts. They will
cling to the automobile, for instance; they will not permit us to adopt
more efficient methods of moving people around. They will defend
the system very much as it is and, if necessary, they will use all the
force they can command. Eventually they will stop dissent altogether,
whether from the intellectuals, the religious, the poor, the people
who run the foundations, the Ivy League colleges, all the rest. The

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colleges are already becoming bureaucratized, anyway. I can’t see
the big universities or the foundations as a strong progressive force.
The people who run Harvard and the Ford Foundation look more
and more like lower-middle-class bureaucrats who pose no threat
to the established order because they are prepared to do anything
to defend the system.

In a book of mine, Tragedy and Hope, I conclude with two words,
“inclusive diversity.” The whole book leads up to those two words.
It seems to me that the American way of life and the traditions of
Western civilization are summed up in this phrase. In recent years,
perhaps for much longer, this tradition has been losing ground to the
opposing principle, exclusive uniformity — the coalescing of highly
uniform groups which exclude people who are different — we build
suburbs for middle-class people to get them away from the workers
and the poor who are left in the cities. We strengthen segregation
in education.

The people who want to halt this trend, the people who want to take
people in buses from the ghetto out into the suburbs so they can go
to school with middle-class children, the people who wish to end
school segregation are the liberals in these groups on the sides and
the top: intellectuals, religious, aristocrats. In American politics, the
Republican Party has tended to be in the center; the Democratic Party,
on the fringes, including the bottom fringes. Notice that the workers
are now abandoning the Democratic Party. They are abandoning it
because they are becoming lower middle class. The fringes — the
intellectuals, the aristocrats, religious people, workers, and the poor
— the great coalition that supported the New Deal — this coalition
is breaking up.

Now, why do children and adolescents rebel? They rebel because
they are brought up in middle-class families with bourgeois values
and priorities — future preference and self-discipline (you can’t go
out tonight, you have to study; you can’t have the car this weekend
because your grades are slipping) — which demand achievement in a

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system built around organizational structures and artifacts. They rebel
against those things because young people cannot get emotional
satisfaction from structures and artifacts. Young people are searching
for satisfaction through contact with each other and with nature. That’s
why they sleep out in the rain and in the cold in groups.

I remember when I was doing some research at Harvard and had to
walk across the Boston Commons just about every day, and it rained
for 3 weeks. There were hundreds of kids lying there in extreme
discomfort who could have been at home sleeping on innerspring
mattresses in air-conditioned comfort. Why? Because they wanted
to feel something. They had renounced the values of their parents.
This was a way of asserting their identity, of dramatizing the fact
that they were not merely an extension of their parents’ lives. They
refused to behave in the way their middle-class parents considered
proper or to strive for the goals their parents equated with successful
achievement.

This is dissent; dissent from middle-class values and it may take a
variety of forms. They may adopt almost any kind of ideology — Zen
Buddhism, the Black Muslim movement, Marxism, anarchism — the
ideologies do not matter. The stated goals of their agitations and
demonstrations and violence do not matter. If they agitate against the
draft and you abolished the draft tomorrow, they would still agitate.

There was a young girl on our campus, Catholic, very pious, with a
couple of brothers who were priests, one of the best-behaved students
we had. She took part in the demonstration at the Pentagon, and
the next week she told me about it. She was a rather colorless girl,
really, but now she was all excited. She exclaimed, “There we were,
all together; marching up the hill, all together!” She belonged, she
was with other young people, and they were going somewhere, doing
something, and the rest of the world was noticing them. Suppose, as
they were marching up the hill, the Pentagon had disappeared, poof!
Probably she would have been quiet for a few weeks. But then she’d
have found something else that needed to be changed, because

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she had to satisfy her own inner need to feel, to assert herself as a
person, to do something.

Dissent that expresses itself in sabotage and violence comes
largely from the children of these two middle-class groups. Now
they have aligned themselves with the culture of poverty, with the
blacks, with the Black Panthers and similar radical groups. Are they
ideologically committed to these groups? I don’t think so. They are
simply trying to be different from their parents, to live from moment-to-
moment: present preference, not future preference. They don’t want
to accumulate artifacts. They want no place in the establishment.

Dissent against the establishment — its structures and its artifacts
— is not necessarily disloyalty. But if it becomes nihilistic, anarchistic,
and destructive simply because of the emotional inadequacies of
the individual dissenters, then it can become dangerous, not to the
government but in terms of the physical damage they can do to our
vulnerable operating systems. And in the process, they may also
injure some of the very things they value most, such as the prospects
for real improvement in the condition of the worst disadvantaged of
our society, the blacks and the poor.

QUESTION: Do you envision any real intermingling between the
aristocrats and other groups?

DR. QUIGLEY:

Actually, there are few aristocrats and it is not easy to reach them. If
they meet you, they behave democratically, but they don’t say, “Here
is my phone number. Call me up.”

But they have been a significant element in the politics of many
countries, including this one, particularly in the last generation or
so. And most people are not really familiar with them because, while
they can be found in many places, they are unobtrusive. There is an
aristocrat who lives in Georgetown. He has a house there with a dome,
a small version of Monticello. A descendant of Martha Washington,

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he spends all his time working for the improvement of Georgetown.
But he doesn’t want his name in the paper.

So people don’t notice aristocrats or they don’t understand them.
There are some parts of the country where it is hard to find them —
Reno, Nevada, for example. They are scattered around mostly in
places where there are olderfamilies, some of them very impoverished
now but nevertheless people who command great respect in their
community. A book called Deep South describes Natchez, Mississippi;
it tells about a family there which has no money, and yet nothing is
done in that town without consulting with them.

If you are asking me, “Will the rebels against the middle class work
with the aristocrats?” they already do to some extent. As you know,
they rush out and work for the Kennedys or anyone else they believe
to be devoted to a cause beyond their own personal interests. This
is the kind of an image a politician has to create in order to get their
support.

QUESTION: Do the dissenters typically join established groups, or
do they form their own?

DR. QUIGLEY:

Of course they tend to be suspicious of established groups. The
religious dissenters may take up religious reform along with political
and social causes. The girl I mentioned, who wanted to blow down
the Pentaeton, also insisted that Catholic services on Sundays at the
university be turned into a real hippie Mass in which she played the
guitar. Generally, it would be difficult to align large groups of dissenters
because they would disagree on so many things.

QUESTION: Are all the dissenters young people rebelling against
the values of their middle-class parents?

DR. QUIGLEY:

No, not all. One group, for example, are the intellectuals who

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originally founded the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to work for
control of the atomic bomb. They are almost religious in some of the
positions they take.

QUESTION: Do the workers’ children not rebel against their parents
in the same way as middle-class children?

DR. QUIGLEY:

No, they don’t. For one thing; they don’t have the economic base.
The children of the middle class are rebelling and their parents are
picking up the tab. A couple of years ago I met a girl hanging around
Du Pont Circle who was getting $150 a month from her parents
to stay away from home. Workers’ children don’t do that. In a real
working family, the kids graduate from high school and never go on
to college; they have to get a job and support themselves. They may
marry pretty quickly. In the old days, the aristocrats and the workers
married young and had many children, while the middle classes
postponed marriage and had few children because they looked
to the future; they had no more children than they could properly
educate. Intellectuals often had many children because they were
less concerned about the future and figured they could send their
kids to college on scholarships. I would say that the dissenters on
the fringes may be of any age, but the dissenters from the middle
class are more likely to be adolescents or of college age.

Of course, college students may be 30 years old or even older.
Career preparation in the middle class is now pushing up to age 30. A
middle-class child who wants to become a medical doctor specializing
in some field (which is virtually essential) will not be an income-earning
individual until he is 30. And his parents must be willing to finance all
that, which means they will also finance his dissent.

QUESTION: Ex-HEW Secretary John Gardner is trying to form a
coalition of people of all kinds to work for reform. Do you think this

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will be successful?

DR. QUIGLEY:

I don’t know. John Gardner is a bureaucrat from the eastern
establishment as, indeed, Dean Rusk was. Whether this will be
successful I don’t know. I would be a little dubious. But I think he is
on the right track. We have got to induce young people to put their
nervous energies and their desire for self-assertion and action into
practical reform on a piecemeal basis. But this is very difficult. You
have no idea of the pressures that we who are on the firing line in
the universities have been under in the last few years, trying to hold
back the explosion, trying to persuade students that it is possible to
reform but it has to be done on a piecemeal basis above all, that it
is necessary first to know the facts of the problem.

They say, “The Congress is corrupt.” I ask them, “What do you know
about the Congress? Do you know your own Congressman’s name?”
Usually they don’t. It’s almost a reflex with them, like seeing a fascist
pig in a policeman. To them, all Congressmen are crooks. I tell them
they must spend a lot of time learning the American political system
and how it functions, and then work within the system. But most of
them just won’t buy that. They insist the system is totally corrupt. I
insist that the system, the establishment, whatever you call it, is so
balanced by diverse forces that very slight pressures can produce
perceptible results.

For example, I’ve talked about the lower middle class as the
backbone of fascism in the future. I think this may happen. The party
members of the Nazi Party in Germany were consistently lower middle
class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are pretty
generally in this group. But, on the other hand, I believe we could
make the United States much more stable if the whole middle class
could simply get together on a program that would benefit all of them.

Why, for instance, should the middle class as consumers and buyers
of automobiles be prepared to defend Ford or General Motors? A

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piece in the paper yesterday said that the Number 1 complaint of
Americans today is about their automobiles. Why should middle-class
people let themselves be taxed to death for all kinds of things they
don’t need for the benefit of corporations which can’t even manage
themselves efficiently?

In other words, if we can be saved, our salvation may lie in some
coalition of diverse elements. But I do insist that we must study the
situation, see what’s wrong, think it through.

What are the alternatives? Above all, we can’t do it with utopianism
and nihilism. Utopianism is the belief that nothing is worth doing at all
unless it can be done perfectly. This is sheer nonsense. There never
was a time when everything was perfect and there never will be. The
nihilist says everything must be destroyed first and then rebuilt from
the ground up. This is not only nonsense; it is suicide.

QUESTION: Some writers have suggested that the much maligned
bourgeois values saving for the future, home ownership, educating
your kids, strict standards of morality have given this country the
internal stability and the moral stamina which enabled us to win two
world wars, maybe others. Would you comment on this?

DR. QUIGLEY:

I would just as soon not go into who won the wars. Most of the wars
we get into, the other side seems to win. They told us Japan and
Germany were defeated, but they seem to me to be doing awfully
well. But I don’t think you can have any society without self-discipline,
individual responsibility, some kind of property that you can call your
own, some basis for identity, some system of moral values. Only
emotional people cry, “Down with the middle classes,” or any other
class. I think that we can design a better society, and we still have
about the best society that’s around. The fact that we are discontented
with its imperfections is not a bad thing in itself, but it is no justification
to destroy it. And if we are to have a society in the future which is

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strong and healthy and stable, it will be based to a very considerable
extent on the virtues that you’re talking about. But it cannot be based
upon a rigid loyalty to structures.

QUESTION: How much support do you believe the dissenters in
this country are getting from the Communists?

DR. QUIGLEY:

I’m sure the Communists are supporting the dissenters. But the
Communists are of no importance. The Communist Party in this
country was destroyed. Read Shannon’s history. It is extremely likely
that by 1960 one of the chief sources of funds for the Communist
Party in this country was the FBI spies who had joined it. And the
chief financial support of the Communists from about 1 920 to about
1950 was Wall Street. Why? I do not know. If you’re interested, look
up the story of The Institute of Pacific Relations; it was financed by
Lee Higginson & Company of Boston, Frederick Vanderbilt Field of
New York, and other big money interests.

When these people cut off this money, about 1 949, the Communists
were pretty much finished. Their only other source of money was
Moscow, and Moscow has never been generous with funds for local
Communist Parties, which they believe should support themselves.
According to an FBI estimate, I believe, the Communists in this
country are down to about 1 5,000 members. Take Angela Davis. She
is emotionally alienated from our society, and for good reasons, but
this has little to do with communism, even if she is a member of the
Party. This is why I say ideology is not really important in dissent.
People become Communists not because they like the ideology, but
because they wish to demonstrate their opposition, just as young
people let their hair grow and won’t polish their shoes or wear neckties.

QUESTION: In your diagram, you have no place for the youth
movement as such — the yippies, the hippies, and so on, as a class.

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They seem to be increasing in numbers. Are they growing into a class
which ultimately we will have to support?

DR. QUIGLEY:

Not a social class as I would define it. This is one of the most
controversial questions in sociology: What is a social class? I construe
social classes here in terms of outlook, the values and priorities
that are held neurologically rather than intellectually. I don’t regard
the various youth cults and groups as a social class. They are not
coalescing because I don’t think there’s any program or even value
system that they can agree on. Some people think that, because
they’re rebelling against middle-class values, they agree on their own
values. They don’t. Some of them, for example, believe in having sex
every hour of the day; others, that they should give up sex completely
— in both cases, because they’re against middle-class values.

Anyway, most of them are not doing much, at least from my
observation. In fact, it’s the neuters who are not sexually identified
who are the real troublemakers, the neuters — increasingly female
neuters, I notice — egging other people on. I think most of them will
eventually find a place in society. At my university, the students range
from the extreme left — proclaimed Communists — to the extreme
right — outright reactionaries, including some neo-Nazis.

What a college administrator must do, if things polarize, is to try to
get the split, the line of cleavage, as far to the left as possible. If he
acts precipitately — bringing in the police, for example — he is sunk
because the whole middle group will go against the police. Then the
split will be toward the right or down the middle.

What he must do is to try to isolate the left. To do that, you have
to give them their head to some extent. If you do, they will probably
splinter, with only a few dozen real troublemakers on the fringe. What
you must avoid above all is a split in the university community that
puts a large group on the side of the violent dissenters. That happens
when the authorities act too soon and too strongly.

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THE MYTHOLOGY OF
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Perspectives in Defense Management, Winter 1972-1973

This article was edited for publication here with the author’s

approval from a transcript of his presentation to the Industrial

College of the Armed Forces on August 1 7, 1 972.

An unromantic historian argues that the great traditions of American
democracy tell us little about how the system has actually worked
and evolved.

I could easily make this talk a self-praising, Fourth of July oration,
vintage 1880. But that’s not what you want and that’s not what I am
qualified to give you.

I am going to give you an historical view of the American democratic
tradition with analytical overtones showing how democracy has
changed over the course of our history. The United States is a
democracy. I think there is no doubt of that — but the American
democratic tradition is largely a myth.

First, a few definitions. I define democracy as majority rule and
minority rights. Of these the second is more important than the first.
There are many despotisms which have majority rule. Hitler held
plebiscites in which he obtained over 92 percent of the vote, and
most of the people who were qualified to vote did vote. I think that
in China today a majority of the people support the government, but
China is certainly not a democracy.

The essential half of this definition then, is the second half, minority
rights. What that means is that a minority has those rights which
enable it to work within the system and to build itself up to be a

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majority and replace the governing majority. Moderate deviations
from majority rule do not usually undermine democracy. In fact,
absolute democracy does not really exist at the nation-state level.
For example, a modest poll tax as a qualification for voting would be
an infringement on the principle of majority rule but restrictions on
the suffrage would have to go pretty far before they really abrogated
democracy. On the other hand relatively slight restrictions on minority
rights — the freedoms of speech, assembly, and other rights — would
rapidly erode democracy.

Another basic point. Democracy is not the highest political value.
Speeches about democracy and the democratic tradition might lead
you to think this is the most perfect political system ever devised.
That just isn’t true. There are other political values which are more
important and urgent — security, for example. And I would suggest that
political stability and political responsibility are also more important.

In fact, I would define a good government as a responsible
government. In every society there is a structure of power. A
government is responsible when its political processes reflect that
power structure, thus ensuring that the power structure will never be
able to overthrow the government. If a society in fact could be ruled
by a minority because that elite had power to rule and the political
system reflected that situation by giving governing power to that elite,
then, it seems to me, we would have a responsible government even
though it was not democratic.

Some of you are looking puzzled. Why do we have democracy in
this country? I’ll give you a blunt and simple answer, which means,
of course, that it’s not the whole truth. We have democracy because
around 1880 the distribution of weapons in this society was such
that no minority could make a majority obey. If you have a society
in which weapons are cheap, so that almost anyone can obtain
them, and are easy to use — what I call amateur weapons — then
you have democracy. But if the opposite is true, weapons extremely
expensive and very difficult to use — the medieval knight, for example,

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with his castle, the supreme weapons of the year 1100 — in such a
system, with expensive and difficult-to-use weapons, you could not
possibly have majority rule. But in 1880 for $100 you could get the
two best weapons in the world, a Winchester rifle and a Colt revolver;
so almost anyone could buy them. With weapons like these in the
hands of ordinary people, no minority could make the majority obey
a despotic government.

Now there are some features of democracy that many people really
do not understand. It is said, for example, that our officials are elected
by the voters, and the one that gets the most votes is elected. I
suggest that this is misleading. The outcome of an election is not
determined by those who vote, but by those who don’t vote. Since
1945 or so, we have had pretty close elections, with not much more
than half of the people voting. In the 1968 election about 80 million
voted, and about 50 million qualified to vote did not. The outcome was
determined by the 50 million who didn’t vote. If you could have got 2
percent of the nonvoters to the polls to vote for your candidate, you
could have elected him. And that has been true of most of our recent
elections. It’s the ones who don’t vote who determine the outcome.

Something else we tend to overlook is that the nomination process
is much more important than the election process. I startle a lot of
my colleagues who think they know England pretty well by asking
them how candidates for election are nominated in England. They
don’t have conventions or primary elections. So the important thing
is who names the candidates. In any democratic country, if you could
name the candidates of all parties, you wouldn’t care who voted or
how, because your man would be elected. So the nominations are
more important than the elections.

A third point is one I often make in talking with students who are
discouraged about their inability to influence the political process. I
say this is nonsense. There never was a time when it was easier for
ordinary people to influence political affairs than today. One reason,
of course, is that big mass of nonvoters. If you can simply get 2 or 3

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percent of them to the polls — and that shouldn’t be too difficult —
then you can elect your candidate, whoever he is.

There are three key factors in elections — money, organization,
enthusiasm. If you have two of them you can win. Students may not
have much money, but they can organize — apparently McGovern
has an organization — and they are enthusiastic. Gene McCarthy
went pretty far on enthusiasm alone four years ago, even though he
didn’t have an organization or much money.

THAT ANGLO-SAXON HERITAGE

Now let’s look at some democratic traditions. Most people say that
our democratic traditions began in England. This is totally a myth.
England was in no sense a democratic country in 1775, when we
declared our independence. It remained an undemocratic country
until well into the 20th century. Candidates were not nominated by the
people, and members of parliament were not even paid until 1911.

Furthermore, England had an oligarchic political structure. It did
reform itself radically in the 1820’s and became one of the best
governments in the world by shifting to what I would call an aristocratic
structure, that is, one with a sense of responsibility to the public
welfare. But they didn’t have a democratic system. An ordinary person
couldn’t get a secondary education at all until after 1 902, and higher
education didn’t become widely available until after 1945 and the
reforms of the last quarter of a century.

Furthermore, both in England and in our country — this is part of our
undemocratic heritage from England — access to justice is strictly
limited. Until 30 years ago England had a rigidly stratified society,
the only one in Europe where you could tell a person’s social class
the minute he opened his mouth. The upper classes had a different
accent. Today, with the BBC and more popular education, speaking
accents are blending, as opportunities for changing status are opening
upward. But access to law, to the courts, to justice, as well as to

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education, were strictly limited, and for he most part still are in the
English-speaking world.

When somebody infringes your rights, it’s usually too expensive for
you to defend them. This is true even in income-tax disputes. And it
hit me, for example, in the matter of copyright. A fellow published a
book a couple of years ago, in which 30 of its 121 pages came right
out of a book I had published. I cannot sue him for infringement of
copyright because I can’t afford it. And he’s made so much money
out of his book, that he could fight me right up to the Supreme Court,
and he might even win. But I don’t have the $1 50,000 it takes to flight
a case to the Supreme Court.

So, the American democratic tradition was born here, not in England,
and its antecedents go back to non-English sources — for example,
the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE POWERS

Next, the Constitution. It is not democratic but republican, a different
thing. That means only that we don’t have a king. It protects minority
rights chiefly in the first ten amendments. Before they were added, it
provided very little protection for minority rights. It did provide for jury
trial, but as I have shown, access to the courts was a class privilege.

These first ten amendments were the basis of minority rights in the
Constitution. But they were accompanied by many weaknesses,
which have remained throughout our history. It is important that we
realize this, because our safety, our lives, and our happiness depend
upon our constitutional forms of government.

The Constitution established three branches of government —
executive, legislative, and judicial — but any governing system has
more than three parts. For instance, the taxing power was split up.
Two other powers are especially important: the administrative power
and the incorporating power. These are vital in any government.
They are not allotted to anyone in the Constitution, certainly not to

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the Federal Government.

By the incorporating power I mean the right of a government to
say that a group of people will be regarded in law as a person with
the right to hold property and to sue and be sued in the courts. That
power is left with the States.

The administrative power is that discretionary power which is
absolutely essential to government. It is best represented, I think, in
a policeman controlling traffic at a busy intersection. He starts and
stops the traffic according to his judgment of what is best to keep
traffic flowing smoothly and safely. That is the administrative power.
It is one of the original powers of government. It involves such things
as protecting the health and sanitation of any community by such
means as requiring vaccination. In constitutional law we call it the
police power but that does not mean the policeman’s power. It means
discretionary power.

For almost 100 years after the Civil War there was a struggle among
the three branches of the Government for control of the administrative
power. Now we have independent administrative and regulatory
agencies which are subject to the courts or to the executive branch
or to the congressional branch. In many cases they have become
autonomous. For instance, one of the things they did, without guidance
from any of the three main branches until very late, was to introduce
all the inequities of the English-speaking judicial and legal system
into the procedures of administration.

The Constitution made no provision for breaking a deadlock among
the three branches. It was assumed that in such a case whatever
action was at issue should not be done — in other words, anything
worth doing will be supported by all branches of the government. If
they don’t agree, it’s better not to do it. The basic assumption was, of
course, that no disasters would result from paralysis in government,
because we were secure from sudden and overwhelming attack from
abroad. Domestic paralysis we could live with. And as long as we
were protected by our two oceans and the British Navy, and later by

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our own armed forces, we were able to muddle through. Since the
advent of nuclear weapons, the situation is different, and the problem
of how to ensure prompt action in a crisis, has been a continuing
constitutional issue.

One of the most essential parts of our political system is our political
parties, which grew up wholly outside the Constitution and the legal
system as the links between the three branches of our government.
You have been reading about the dispute over delegates for the
Republican National Convention. For a long time about a quarter
of the Republican delegates did not represent the voters at all
because they came from purely Democratic States in the South.
Today the non-Republican States do not have so large a block of
delegates. McKinley’s nomination in 1896 was arranged ahead of
time in Thomasville, Georgia, the preceding winter by Mark Hanna’s
buying up the Southern delegates to the Republican Convention of
1896. The Southern delegates were paid $200 plus rail fare and hotel
bills to vote for McKinley. Anyway, the party system has evolved to
make up for one of the major deficiencies of the Constitution, the
lack of provisions to translate the citizen’s vote into a government
responsive to the popular will.

Another extraconstitutional development is judicial supremacy. This
was simply asserted and exercised by the judiciary, which determines
whether legislation is constitutional and makes rulings which the
executive branch is supposed to carry out. But in adopting this
principle, we have simply taken over the undemocratic feature of the
English system, which requires the citizen to defend his rights in courts
of law. Today people who are penniless do enjoy that right because
they can get the American Civil Liberties Union, or some foundation,
or somebody else, to finance their litigation. But an ordinary middle-
class person of limited means is denied that right. Both of these
institutional developments, political parties and judicial supremacy,
are outside the Constitution. Both of them are largely irresponsible.
They are not responsible to the people.

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THE STAGES OF POLITICAL GROWTH

Let me quickly review the history of American democracy in terms
of how candidates are nominated. There were five stages in that
historical evolution. In the first, beginning in 1 789 and for more than
40 years thereafter, candidates were named by the legislators. This
method was called the legislative caucus. Up to the early 1840’s there
was a steady extension of democracy by changes in the State voting
laws, culminating in the Rhode Island reforms of 1842, resulting from
Dorr’s rebellion, extending the suffrage to the ordinary man. By 1 843
voting democracy was established more or less in all the States.

The second stage was the era of the spoils system, and it lasted
for a little over 40 years, from just before 1840 to just after 1880.
The spoils system arose, from the fact that in a system of mass
democracy, where most men at least have the right to vote, there
must be some way of nominating candidates for office. The method
chosen was the nominating convention. This raised the problem of
how to finance sending the delegates to the convention.

The solution developed around 1 840 was for the party machine of the
winning party in an election to reward the party faithful by appointing
them to government office. To the victor belong the spoils. These
appointees then kick back money to the party kitty, say, a quarter or
10 percent of their salary every year; and these kick-backs provide
the funds for the nomination convention and the process of political
campaigning. In that new system government officials themselves
went as paid delegates to the nominating conventions, and the
nominations and getting out the vote in elections were controlled
by the party machines. All of these were local in cities or on a State
basis. It was a feudalistic power structure.

One of the interesting features of the whole system is the role that
polities played in people’s lives. In this period, from 1840 to 1880,
politics and religion, frequently revivalist religion, were the chief
entertainment outlets the American people had. They did not have

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organized sports or other kinds of entertainment except an occasional
traveling company of actors, and, more often, revivalist preachers.
So people identified with a political party.

The closest parallel to this in our own time perhaps, is the national
hullabaloo in the late thirties and early forties over the contest between
the Yankees and the Dodgers in the World Series, when everybody
at least in the eastern part of the country and everybody in New York,
was rooting for one or for the other, for totally irrational reasons. This
was a purely emotional thing. If their team won they were ecstatic,
if their team lost they were downcast. Well, that’s what politics was
like in the era of the spoils system, and it continued until about the
mid-1890’s.

Here’s how the system worked. Professionals, not amateurs, ran
the elections. Issues were of little importance. Charisma was not
important; in fact, it was a drawback. The parties put up the most
colorless dark horse they could find — the less people knew about
him the better — and then counted on enthusiasm for the party to
get out the votes.

Elections in that period were pretty close, although after 1865, on
the whole, the Republicans did better than the Democrats because
the South had become a minority area and the Democrats a minority
party. But on the whole few people were interested in issues or
in candidates, and it was very difficult for a winning candidate to
be reelected because once people got to know him they quickly
discovered how dull a person he was. That’s why he got nominated
in the first place. The nominee was by definition the candidate that the
local State party machines had nothing against. The local machines
had an effective veto, and by the time they finished vetoing everybody
who had any importance or was known, the only one left might be
a man like James A. Garfield, a completely dark horse. The only
alternative was a Civil War general, who did, of course, exercise
some attraction. The elections were extremely close, and up to 80
percent of the electorate voted. We have the exact figures for most

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of this period. The average was 78.5 percent. We have never gone
that high since 1896.

This spoils system was, in a sense, a shakedown operation,
particularly against business. And as business and finance became
stronger, they became increasingly restive under this exploitation by
party machines. Take the New York Customs House, which had 1 , 1 00
officials who were the very core of the New York election machine,
which in turn was the core of the system for the whole country. Those
1,100 officials kicked back a good part of their salaries to the New
York State party machine. So they in turn, charged businessmen
outrageous tariffs, as much as the traffic would bear. The laws were
ignored. The customs officials would tie up a shipment of steel and
keep it tied up until the tariff they demanded was paid.

As a consequence, businessmen changed the system in 1880-
1883. A great man, William C. Whitney (who later started the
modern American Navy as Secretary of the Navy in the Cleveland
administration), devised a scheme to cut the very roots out from
under the party machines. He established the Civil Service in the
Pendleton Act of 1883. This had the effect of cutting off most of the
funds on which the party machines depended. So the parties now
had to look to big business to finance them.

This led to the third historical stage, the era of big-business
domination, from 1 884 to 1 932. It was radically different from the one
preceding. Voting dropped off drastically. In the 1870’s political activity
had cut across all groups and classes — rich and poor, while and
black, Catholic and Protestant. Negroes were more active in politics
in the 1 870’s and 1 880’s than they have been at any time in the 20th
century until very recently. Politics was everybody’s game. But once
big business got control, voting fell off and hovered around 52 percent,
instead of the 78 percent it had been before. The professionals were
pushed out and amateurs took over — people who came in for one
campaign or two, generally financed by business — men like William
McKinley, who was elected President in 1896.

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Then, big business discovered it could control the Republican
National Convention, because of all those delegates from the Solid
South who did not represent voters and who therefore could easily
be bought. From 1896 on, as a result, the Republicans dominated the
national scene through amateur control of politics, and increasingly
restricting political activity among middle class whites to the WASP’s. It
was in the 1 890’s that we got the Jim Crow laws and other restrictions
which in one way or another ensured that certain minority groups
really couldn’t expect to make it.

Eventually big business undermined its own dominance by being too
greedy — there’s no other word for it — in the 1 920’s. They alienated
not only the workers and the farmers and the petit-bourgeois white-
collar workers, but much of the middle classes, including most of the
merchants and light industry. All that was left, still in control at the top,
was high finance (sometimes called Wall Street) and heavy industry
— steel, coal, the automobile industry, and so on. By running politics
solely for their own benefit they alienated everybody else.

So in 1 932 everybody else lined up behind a Democrat. In the once
solid mid-West, which for decades had voted Republican year in and
year out — except rarely for a third party as in 1892 and in 1924 —
many people now decided that the Civil War had been over for a long
time and it was time to vote Democratic.

Out of this situation came the New Deal, the fourth stage. The New
Deal was a system of organized blocs. Formerly organized finance
and organized heavy industry had run everything else. Now the New
Deal set about organizing all the other interests, especially mass
labor in the CIO, the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee (SWOC),
and the United Mine Workers, which had been the only really strong
labor union before 1 930. They organized mass labor; they organized
the farmers, they organized others: Most of their money came from
merchants. The largest contributor to Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign
in 1932 was the Strauss family of R. H. Macy. Second largest was
Vincent Astor, whose real-estate holdings in New York City had

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been injured by the depression. Third was Bernard Baruch (who is
considered one of the founding fathers of this institution), who was
a professional contributor to the Democratic Party.

These were the groups that the New Deal organized. What they
wanted to set up was a system of countervailing blocs: finance, heavy
industry, light industry, professional groups, labor, farmers, and so
forth. They figured that if any party or political group got control of the
Government and acted too selfishly, the others would form a coalition
and restore the balance.

THREATS TO DEMOCRACY

Well, the New Deal ran its course, and since about 1950 or so we
have had plutocratic control. I said before that three things were
necessary to win elections: money, enthusiasm, organization. The
role of money has increased to the point where it’s more and more
difficult to offset the lack of it with good organization and enthusiasm.
Organization must be super-efficient and enthusiasm has to be
sustained and widespread. Because the costs of elections, what
with TV air time, air transportation, and all the rest of it, have climbed
sky-high. It cost McGovern $6 million just to get the nomination, and
God knows what it would take to win the election. The Democrats
just don’t have it. Do they have organization and enthusiasm? It’s
hard to tell. I’m afraid the enthusiasm has dwindled to some extent.

Anyway, we now have a plutocratic system, and many politicians see
it simply as a matter of buying elections. Here’s why. As our economy
is now structured, the big corporations — aerospace, oil, and so on
— are able to pour out millions to support the candidates they favor.
The restrictions on the books are easily evaded, and the politicians
in power won’t do much about it because they want some, too.

The second reason is that labor unions are now a part of the
system. They too want to get on the gravy train, and are no longer
concerned with defending the rights of ordinary men or making the

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political system more democratic. Their outlook is little different from
that of the big corporations, because this in effect is what they are.
They are enormously rich, they are not democratically run, and they
have increasingly taken on the characteristics of great corporations:
irresponsibility, anonymity, and undemocratic procedures.

So money is one of the great threats to democracy. A second
threat is what Roman law called persona ficta, fictitious persons —
corporations, labor unions, and similar organizations which have
the legal status of persons in the sense that they can buy and sell
property, they can sue and be sued in the courts, they are generally
anonymous, they are certainly irresponsible, and they are increasingly
powerful. The 15th amendment and various court rulings have
given corporations all the rights of living persons. This is dangerous
because they already have certain rights that real persons don’t have,
principally immortality. That’s the saving grace about even the worst
scoundrel: someday he will die, and maybe we can wait that long. We
felt that way about, Hitler, and Stalin. Maybe Mao is different; we’ll
see. But a corporation never dies. It has the first quality of divinity, as
the ancient Greeks defined it. They called their gods the immortals,
because the only quality they had that set them apart from men was
that they never died.

Besides setting limits to corporate immortality, we must put
other restraints upon all fictitious persons, including foundations,
universities, and all such entities. From 1890 there was competition
among the States to lower the restraints on corporations. Originally,
when a corporation was set up, its charter specified what it was
entitled to do, sell hamburgers to the public or whatever. Today there
are no restrictions, no restraints, no reporting. Even the Congress
can’t find out what are the actual costs, expenditures, and profits of
the automobile manufacturers, whose profits are incredibly high and
yet they are going to raise their prices even higher.

We’ve got to make our corporations more responsible.

Another danger to democracy. I have just spent 314 years studying

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ancient China, Islam, and Byzantium. What undermined all these
civilizations is clearly evident. You see it most clearly in Augustus
Caesar. What did his power rest upon? He wore many hats. He had
the powers of a tribune, he was chief priest, he was commander in
chief, he was consul. There were two consuls, but does anybody know
the name of the other one? One of the threats to our constitutional
system, it seems to me, is that the President of the United States
has many hats.

First he is head of the State. Secondly, he is head of the government.
As you know, these are different things. Ambassadors are accredited
to the head of the State. This seriously hurt us at the Paris Peace
Conference, after World War I when President Wilson represented
the United States. Of the five major powers, four were represented
by prime ministers, who are heads of governments. Wilson, who
was a head of State had the power of immediate decision, and the
English really took advantage of this. They got him to commit himself
to certain things and then used them to bargain for other things they
wanted. He wanted Latin America more or less out of the League of
Nations, so in return for that they got him to promise to reduce the
U.S. Navy in the 1922 Naval Conference. The head of the State in
most, countries is the king or the president. But our President is both.

Thirdly, he is head of a political party. Look at the problems this
creates for Nixon right now. If the bugging of the Democratic National
Committee headquarters in the Watergate is ever pinned on the
Republican Party, many people will see the President himself as
responsible.

Fourthly, he is Commander in Chief. The point came up yesterday
in some law court that there has been no declaration of war in
Southeast Asia either by Congress, as the Constitution provides, or
by a President.

Now, let’s look at Augustus Caesar again. Augustus Caesar’s real
power was in his role as commander in chief. The Latin word is
imperator which we now translate as emperor. He was emperor

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because be was commander in chief and for no other reason.

I won’t go into any fantasies or scenarios about what could happen.
You could think of them yourself. Thank God, in this country — I
believe also in Russia — the armed forces do not directly or even
significantly interfere in politics as armed forces, as they do for
example in Latin American countries, or in the recent attempt by part
of the Moroccan Air Force to assassinate the King. This is unthinkable
in our country. And what makes it unthinkable has nothing to do with
restraints placed upon the military in our government, but with their
self-restraint, their sense of obligation to our system. And for that we
should be very thankful.

But suppose a Presidential candidate lost the election, decided he
wanted to be President anyway, and persuaded the military leaders
to support him. To you military types this may seem an absolute
fantasy. How could the generals and admirals be sure the rank and
file would support such an undertaking. But historically this has
happened again and again in almost every civilization, usually in the
later stages of decline.

The President is also the head of the administrative system with
discretionary and emergency powers.

Another threat to democracy is mass culture. There is an increasingly
pervasive belief in the United States that equality of opportunity is not
enough; we should also have equality in rewards for performance.
Everybody starts the race together and finishes together; everybody
wins. You see this in universities which are abolishing all grading, all
track systems, all encouragement of excellence. The whole trend both
in colleges and in high schools is toward equalization and uniformity.

Our democratic system is not based and cannot be based on
uniformity. It must be based on diversity. We need the diverse talents
of many people working together because of their shared belief in
the necessity and value of our constitutional way of life.

Finally, more and more we have subordinated means and methods
to goals. If the end is good, to hell with the legality. You can see

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this clearly in the Southeast Asia war. It should have been put up
to Congress to declare war. You say that’s mere legality. But when
legality and constitutional restraints go by the board, then you are
simply saying that might makes right, and more and more you will
rely on force to achieve your goals.

REMEDIES

What to do about this? Well, reduce the influence of money. There
are many ways of doing this. I urged 30 years ago public financing
of elections. Try in every way possible to reward enthusiasm and
dedicated effort, strive to internalize individual controls by built-in
restraints. Our Armed Forces have these to a considerable degree.
But let’s internalize controls also in the business world and in labor
unions and in the universities and everywhere else. This involves
social restraints and the kind of social relationships in which people
attach more importance to the good opinion of their friends and
associates than to material gain, power, or success.

We must provide nuclei of pluralistic balancing of forces which
can unite to resist despotism by agreement on the widest possible
interests. What are those interests? Being human is one, and an
important one. We’re all people and we’re all consumers, so the
rights of human beings and of consumers should be the big issues
around which the pluralistic grouping and constant reshuffling of
power groups should revolve.

We must curtail gross growth. I would distinguish between expansion,
which is good, growth, which is neutral, and gross growth, which is
damaging. We’ve got to reduce gross growth by going back to the
beginning with new methods of doing things.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Consider the related problems
of pollution and shortage of energy. We are now going to spend at
least $3 billion to ensure delivery of Middle East oil to this country
by building supertankers and deep-water harbors to accommodate

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them. At present we have only one port in the United States that can
handle them, near Seattle. They’re even talking about spending $47
million, I think, to deepen the tunnel bridge across the Chesapeake
Bay so that supertankers can come under it.

There’s another solution, the hydrogen engine. Its emissions will
be only water vapor. Or we can use the sun’s energy directly. Out in
New Mexico they get 400 or 500 days of consecutive sunshine. So
cover some of these sun-baked surfaces with energy accumulating
devices and channel the energy into our electric grid. There was
an article on this in Science three weeks ago and a book came out
recently on the hydrogen engine.

Now one last point. In the Government there are trigger points. A
trigger point I call a point where slight changes, if you press it, will
have enormous repercussions. I’ll give you one example. Congress
operates on the seniority principle. Seniority is an obstacle to
responsibility and to democracy. Does that mean we must abolish
seniority? Not at all. We can make a very simple change, what I call
a trigger point change. Simply provide that any committee at any
time by majority vote can bring out legislation on the floor. Who can
object to that? Let the committees become responsible instead of
authoritarian.

DISCUSSION

QUESTION: Would you elaborate on your statement that we need to
reduce our gross growth? I don’t understand that term as you use it.

DR. QUIGLEY: Look at it this way. Our society is made up of a
series of what I call operational lines, each of which satisfies an area
of human needs — military, political, economic, social, emotional,
intellectual, religious. At the far end of these lines are resources.
Behind resources are the technologies that exploit and use them.
Technology is embedded in technological systems; in the military,

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these would be weapon systems. Behind these systems are the
patterns of thought, feeling, and action in the society. Behind them,
in turn, are human desires, and behind these are human needs.

Now human needs are socialized into desires. We need food but
we desire steak or hamburger and will not eat roast locusts or pickled
whale blubber, as a friend of mine had handed to him in Iceland one
time. So needs are socialized into desires, desires operate through
patterns of culture upon a technological system — business system,
military system, some other kind of system — and technology works
on resources.

A system is past its prime and in trouble when it increases the
satisfaction of needs simply by using more and more and more
resources, instead of using the same or fewer resources more
efficiently. In short, as our needs and desires increase, we need better
technologies and better systems which can satisfy our needs without
using more resources. For example, Japan, Italy, and Germany were
have-not countries before World War II. They went to war to get more
of the world’s economic goods for themselves. They were defeated,
and lost a lot of their resources. Then we reformed the organizational
structure of their economic system, and introduced new technology,
and today all three of them are have nations, with the highest standard
of living they have ever had, on a smaller resource base.

In short, you have to improve the technology and systems portions
of the operational line in order to increase satisfaction of need. The
operational or output end of the line should be dominated by the
input of needs and desires, but without continually increasing the
consumption of resources. Gross growth results when, say, the need
for moving around is satisfied by a transportation system which uses
the same old technology to produce more and more automobiles,
superhighways, concrete parking lots, underground offices (to make
room for the parking lots), and so on. That is gross growth.

Expansion occurs when you satisfy more needs with the same
resources by improving the operational system which is processing

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resources into satisfaction of needs. This is not the system we’ve
got today.

QUESTION: Which powers of the President do you believe should
be curtailed?

DR. QUIGLEY: I didn’t say anything about curtailing his powers. All I
want is responsibility. Particularly when responsibility is already fixed
in the Constitution, it should be exercised. Specifically, the power to
make war is vested in the Congress. If that’s where we want it, then
let’s use it. If we don’t, then we should change the Constitution and
maybe give the President the power to make war. But he doesn’t
have it now.

In other words I want to bring the legal situation closer to the actual
situation, because I think it’s dangerous for the legal situation to
deviate noticeably from the actual power structure. That’s how you get
into wars. A war occurs only when one, if not both sides, misjudges
the actual power relationships. As long as the legal situation is what
they both agree upon — in other words, it reflects the actual power
relationship — then they will act according to the law. We always
prefer to act upon the basis of our conception of what the facts are
and law is a kind of conceptualization or idealization of the real world
— rather than on the basis of an objective view of reality.

So it’s important that the ideal and the real not be too far apart when
vital decisions are made. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,
or when Hitler attacked Russia, both had perceptions of reality that
were dangerously at variance with the real power situation. Their
decisions, in other words, were irresponsible.

QUESTION: You expressed concern over our multi-hatted President.
What remedies would you suggest to deal with the threat of a President
who wears many hats?

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DR. QUIGLEY: I think we should start with the Congress. If
the President gets away with a lot of things that are or may be
unconstitutional, that’s the fault of the Congress. The Congress
should enforce their responsibilities. They should never go along with
a President like Johnson who could go down there and get them to
agree to just about anything, because he was a very difficult man
to say no to.

Walter Lippmann says the Congress is getting stronger and the
executive weaker, but this is the reverse of the truth. The Congress
is getting weaker. They let all kinds of things go by, because they’re
interested in their own vested interests, particularly their committee
chairmanships.

The Congress should be more responsible to the people, and the
best way to do that is, of course, to have a well-informed electorate.
So this goes back to my original proposal to curtail the power of money
in elections and increase the power of enthusiasm and organization.

QUESTION: You started to talk about trigger points. Could you give
some more illustrations of what you mean?

DR. QUIGLEY: Well, the nomination process is an important one.
We have had some improvements in the process over the last 8
years, but in the Democratic Party, at least, there is a tendency to
fall for slogans and make changes which don’t really get at what is
needed. Specifically, I would not favor any nomination process which
stipulates how many women or how many blacks or how many young
people must be delegates. The important thing is that any black or
any young person or any Catholic or any Hottentot who wants to
function in the system can do so. So the place to begin, I would
say, is the nomination process. There again you have to restrict the
power of money.

Then in the election we have to get the nonvoters to vote, make
them feel it’s important. You have no idea the struggle I had with my

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students two or three years ago. All they wanted to do was to destroy
the system. I told them they were crazy. They simply had no idea
how the system worked, what determines which legislation comes to
the floor of Congress, how candidates for Congress are nominated,
and things like that. They were just against the system. Burn it down,
blow it up, destroy it.

Do you know that the McCarthy campaign began in my freshmen
class at Georgetown? I didn’t realize at the time that Ellen McCarthy
was in the class. After I talked to the class that December, she got
the whole crowd to go up to New Hampshire for the primary. I’m sure
Gene had the same idea. But what I tried to show the kids was that
they could influence the process by working in the system. There
are all kinds of ways to do it, and above all there are those 50 million
people who are nonvoters.

First, however, you have to know how the system actually functions.
Today no system functions the way it seems at first glance, and never
the way the people who are in it describe it. That is certainly true in
the system of higher education in which I operate, where the jobs go
to the fellow who has a Ph.D., not to the one who is best qualified!

QUESTION: Would you comment on the relationship of the availability
of cheap weapons to the current efforts to control small handguns?

DR. QUIGLEY: Well, I don’t think the American people should be
disarmed, but on the other hand I think it’s perfectly possible to keep
track of every gun that is made. We could have a licensing system,
with every gun numbered and every time it changes hands it is
reported to a central computer. Just make sure that the person who
gets the identification actually is who he says he is, and hold him
responsible if the gun gets into someone else’s hands, unless it is
stolen and he promptly reports it.

Of course, the small handguns can’t be equated with the cheaper
weapons of the 1880’s because the latter were really the basic

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weapons of their day. A citizenry armed with rifles and revolvers at
that time was in little danger of succumbing to the military, which didn’t
have anything much better. That has no relation to today’s situation,
and that’s why I’m worried about the prospect of an all-professional
army, which as I said, is a terrible threat to any democratic system.
We’re going for a professional army for the same reason that the
Romans did. They couldn’t keep people in the army, away from their
homes, for 20 and 25 years if they were just drafted men. So they
established a professional army.

Well, pretty soon the soldiers married the girls in the locality and
pretty soon barbarians were enlisting, and one day the Romans woke
up to discover they didn’t, even have a Roman or a Latin-speaking
army at all, but an army of barbarian mercenaries. And you’ve all read
about what that army did to Roman society in the early centuries of
the Christian era.

I’m not saying this is likely to happen to us — the emergence of a
non-American mercenary army, I mean — but high pay and fringe
benefits are going to attract a pretty varied assortment of types, and
I just don’t foresee what it may lead to. And I do know, as a historian,
that whenever weapons become difficult to use and expensive to
obtain, democracy as a functioning political system is in grave danger.
How can we avoid the danger? I believe internal restraints are the
only solution, in the long run. And how you build those I don’t know.

The crime rate of the largest city in the world, Tokyo, is approximately
one seventh of the crime rate of a city like New York. Why? Internal
restraints. Those internal restraints are rooted in something that
maybe we don’t want to buy, in the Japanese family. In the United
States, crime rates among, Chinese-Americans are infinitesimal on
a percentage basis compared to, say, those among the Irish in the
1860’s or the Italians in the 1920’s. The reason is that the Irish and
Italians were broken up sociologically into atomized, self-centered
individuals.

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A political aspirant in the United States begins by
discerning his own interest, and discovering those
other interests which may be collected around, and
amalgamated with it. He then contrives to find some
doctrine of principle which may suit the purposes of this
new association, and which he adopts in order to bring
forward his party and secure its popularity: just as the
imprimatur of the king was in former days printed upon the
title-page of a volume, and was thus incorporated with a
book to which it in no wise belonged.

— De Toequeville, Democracy in America

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PUBLIC AUTHORITY AND THE STATE
IN THE WESTERN TRADITION:

ATHOUSAND YEARS OF GROWTH, A.D. 976-1976

THE OSCAR IDEN LECTURES

The Oscar Iden Lectures are delivered annually at the School of
Foreign Service. Their purpose is to illuminate trends and issues in
world affairs which are of special consequence to the United States.

The Iden Lectures were established in 1 976 through the generosity of
Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Iden, SFS ‘24. Their contribution of an endowment
fund to the School provides a permanent basis for funding the lectures.
The Idens’ generosity to the School has been continuous over the
years and it is fitting that their abiding educational interest should
take the form of a distinguished lecture series in their name.

In October, 1 976, Professor Carroll Quigley delivered the first series
of Oscar Iden Lectures entitled “Public Authority and the State in the
Western Tradition: A Thousand Years of Growth, 976-1976.” The
lecture series was an occasion to re-gather around Professor Quigley
who had retired from the School of Foreign Service the previous spring
after forty years of teaching. The audience was composed chiefly
of Professor Quigley’s colleagues and former students who were
grateful for the chance to be informed once again by his brilliance
and eloquence.

About a month after the final lecture, Professor Quigley died suddenly.
The lectures which he had intended to prepare for publication had
only been partially edited by him. In order to bring his final lectures
and tour d’horizon to print, we asked his former teaching assistant,
Helen Veit, to prepare them. She has assembled the manuscript
which is published here, taking care to be faithful to both Professor
Quigley’s style and to the nature of the occasion itself. Accordingly,

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the printed lectures are as true and direct a translation and reflection
of the lecture series as it has been possible to produce.

This publication is intended primarily for distribution to Professor
Quigley’s friends and former students. It is being sent with particular
appreciation to those who have contributed to the Carroll Quigley
Fund which is being established to create an endowed professorship
at the School of Foreign Service. To facilitate additional contributions
to this Fund, a pledge card is enclosed.

Dean Peter F. Krogh
School of Foreign Service

PART I: "THE STATE OF COMMUNITIES", A.D. 976-1576

For a decade after 1931, my chief intellectual concern was the
growth of the European state in the Old Regime, before 1789. I
dreamed that at some date in the future, perhaps thirty years in
the future, I would write the definitive history of the growth of public
authority and the development of the European state. But after 1941 I
had to abandon the project because I was too busy with my teaching
— which I enjoyed thoroughly — and no longer had access to an
adequate library. Above all, I discovered that other historians were
becoming so narrowly specialized, and their historical concepts so
inadequate, that it was almost impossible to explain to them what
had happened in the growth of the state. They lacked the conceptual
paradigms, the knowledge of comparative developments, and even
the understanding of their own specialties to grasp a subject as
broad and of such long duration as the growth of public authority
over the last thousand years. Anyone who does not understand the
long term development of this subject cannot understand the more
limited aspects of it in more recent periods. But modern historians are
increasingly specialized in narrow ranges of chronology, geographic

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area, and aspects of changing events.

Let me give you a few examples of how the lack of adequate
paradigms blocks our understanding of the history of our subject.

The area of political action in our society is a circle in which at least
four actors may intervene: the government, individuals, communities,
and voluntary associations, especially corporations. Yet, for the last
century, discussion of political actions, and especially the controversies
arising out of such actions, have been carried on in terms of only two
actors, the government and the individual. Nineteenth century books
often assumed a polarization of the individual versus the state, while
many twentieth century books seek to portray the state as the solution
of most individuals’ problems. Conservatives, from von Hayek to Ayn
Rand, now try to curtail government in the excuse that this will give
more freedom to individuals, while liberals try to destroy communities
with the aim of making all individuals identical, including boys and girls.
And since what we get in history is never what any one individual or
group is struggling for, but is the resultant of diverse groups struggling,
the area of political action will be increasingly reduced to an arena
where the individual, detached from any sustaining community, is
faced by gigantic and irresponsible corporations.

A second example is derived directly from the field of history. More
than fifteen years ago, an old friend of mine, Professor Robert R.
Palmer — we were colleagues at Princeton in the History Department
in 1936 and 1937 — won fame, and fortune from the publication
of a large book on the eighteenth century revolutions in Europe
and America. The book was loaded with facts, but lacked any real
understanding of the subject. Even the title, The Age of the Democratic
Revolution, was misleading because neither the French Revolution
nor the American Revolution was “democratic.” Bob Palmer is a very
industrious person with a very agile mind, and a ready verbalizer, but
he does not know what he means by “revolution” or by “democratic,”
and he is totally wrong if he believes the eighteenth century revolution,
in the United States or the English-speaking world in general, was

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the same as the eighteenth century revolution in France: in fact, they
were the opposite. The French Revolution was a struggle to obtain
sovereignty by a government which did not have it. The English-
speaking Revolution was an effort by states which had sovereignty to
curtail it, divide it up, hamper it, by means of such things as federalism,
separation of powers, electoral colleges, and so forth.

My third example of the injuries inflicted on the historiography of the
growth of the state is more personal. My doctoral dissertation on the
Public Administration of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy (Harvard,
1938) was never published because over-specialized experts who
read the version revised for publication persisted in rejecting the
aspects of the book in which they were not specialists. The only
man who read it and had the slightest idea what it was all about was
Salvemini, the great historian from the University of Florence, who was
a refugee in this country at the time. The book’s message could be
understood only by an historian who knew the history of Italy, France,
and Austria, and was equally familiar with events before the French
Revolution and afterwards. But these national and chronological
boundaries are exactly the ones recent historians hesitate to cross,
for the French were reluctant to admit that the late revolutionary and
Napoleonic reforms in French government had been anticipated
in Italy, while many Italian historians knew nothing about French
government before 1789 and wanted to concentrate only on the
Risorgimento after 1814. No one was much interested in my discovery
that the French state as it developed under Napoleon was based
largely on Italian precedents. For example, while the French state
before 1 789 had no budgets or accounts, Napoleon’s budgets in both
France and Italy were strikingly similar to the budgets of the Duchy
of Milan in the sixteenth century. Similarly, the unified educational
system established by Napoleon in France in 1808 was anticipated
in the Kingdom of Piedmont in the 1720’s. Such discoveries form
part of the history of the growth of the European state, but are not of
much interest to the narrow and overspecialized controversies of the

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last half century. So instead of writing the history of public authority, I
got into what was, I suppose, my much stronger activity: the creation
of the necessary conceptual paradigms, structures, and frameworks
for understanding historical processes.

The basic entity we must understand is the civilization as a whole.
Although I tell you I’m going to talk about the last thousand years,
976-1976, Western Civilization, of which we are a part, has been
around for a considerably longer time than that. We might say Western
Civilization began around 550, but there was no significant structure
of public authority until almost 1050, with no state at all over the
preceding two centuries, 850-1050. Yet 950 is significant as the
point at which our Western Civilization began the first of its three
great Ages of Expansion, 970-1270. (The othertwo were 1440-1590
and 1770-1890). This first age of expansion applies to the core of
Western Civilization, the area between the Rhine River and the Loire,
the area which formed the core of the Carolingian Empire (687-887).
This Empire was the earliest political structure of the new Western
Civilization, one of four new civilizations which sprouted from the ruins
of Classical Civilization after A. D. 500. These four were Byzantine
(330-1453), Islamic (630-1922), Russian (800-7), and Western (550-
?). Each of them modified the traditions it accepted from the ruins of
Classical Civilization and created its own distinctive culture.

Another paradigm I want to establish is a difference between two
kinds of civilizations, which means a difference between two kinds
of governments in them. Asiatic civilizations, which I call Class B
Civilizations, generally do not attempt to deal with individuals or with
the problems of individuals; they leave interpersonal relationships to
the local or kinship community. Class A Civilizations include Classical
Civilization, our own Western Civilization, or the first Chinese or
Sinic Civilization, whose dates are 1 800 B.C. to 400 A.D. In Class A
Civilizations, although the civilization begins as an area of common
culture made up of communities, there is a long term trend to destroy
and break down those communities.

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The way I would like to express this would be — and I used to draw
it on the blackboard — by saying that all civilizations start out as
aggregations of communities. Those communities are generally of
two types, either local, such as parishes, neighborhoods, villages,
or manors; or kinship communities, families, clans, and so forth.
When a civilization begins with such communities, as ours did in
550, there is no state, and there are no atomized individuals. I will
not go into the details of this, but in such communities, there are
no written laws; all law is customary. Most controls on behavior are
what I call internalized, that is, they are built into your hormones and
your neurological responses. You do what is necessary to remain a
member of the community, because if you were not a member of the
community, you would be nothing. You would not be a man. As you
may know if you have ever studied linguistics, the names which many
primitive and not-so-primitive peoples have for themselves is their
word for man. The communities from which Classical Civilization came
were clans, kinship groups; the communities from which Western
Civilization came were local villages and manors. Lucky civilizations,
such as Chinese Civilization over the past 1500 years, generally have
communities which are both kinship and local.

What happens in the course of a Class A Civilization, over a thousand
or more years, is that the fundamental communities are broken up and
gradually disintegrate into smaller and smaller groups, and may end
up simply as what we call nuclearfamilies, a father and a mother, who
eventually lose all discipline and control of their children. The result
of this process is a state which is not only sovereign but totalitarian,
and it is filled with isolated individuals.

Of the four civilizations which came out of Classical Antiquity’s
wreckage, two, Islamic and Byzantine, clearly are Class B Civilizations,
that is, they continued to work for communities. Their governments
were governments of limited powers, of which the most important
were raising money and recruiting soldiers. The finest example of
such an Asiatic Despotism was the Mongolian Empire of Jenghiz Khan

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about A. D. 1250, but its origins go back to the Persian Empires of the
Achaemenids and the Sassanids. Good examples of such a structure
are the Chinese Civilization of 220-1949, the Byzantine Empire after
640, and the Islamic sultanates which eventually culminated in the
Ottoman Empire. The efforts of the Carolingian Franks to establish a
similar empire in Western Civilization collapsed and led to the Dark
Age of 860-970.

These eastern political traditions might be called Providential Empire
or Providential Monarchy, and they are associated with the idea of a
Providential Deity. To us today, who shove religion off into a corner and
insist that it must have nothing to do with politics or business or many
other things, it may be hard to grasp that one of the most potent things
in establishing the structure of the state in any civilization has always
been men’s ideas of the nature of deity. I will not take time to give
you my paradigm for that; I’ll simply point out to you something which
should be obvious. The deity — God — has many different attributes.
He is creator; he is masculine; he is transcendental, that is, he is
outside of the world of space and time — that was established by 500
B.C. Eventually, he is one; that is what Muhammad insisted on. And
then he is omnipotent, all-powerful. I stop at this point; Providential
Empires never got further than this.

The next development in our ideas of deity in Western Civilization
was that God is good. That was established by the prophets of the
desert by the fifth century B.C. Then came the Christian message,
God is love, and by the year 1250 A.D., the scholastic inference that
God is pure reason. If God is good, he cannot do everything; he can
only do things that are good. And if he can do only good, and cannot
do evil, then there is something higher than God: the rules of ethics.
Thus the great contribution, even before Christ, to the Western idea
of deity, was the idea of Transcendental Ethical Monotheism.

On the other hand, if God is one, omnipotent and providential, which
means he interferes in the world, then whatever happens in the world
does so because he permitted it. And whatever he permitted, who

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is any ordinary human being to question it? (If you read the Book of
Job, you will see that this contradiction comes into the conversation
where Job says, “God, you’re running the world all wrong. You’re
letting bad people be elected President...” and so forth.) In Providential
Monarchy, deity is heaven. The Chinese word is tian, which means
heaven; the word in the original Indo-European language was
something like dyess. From this came deus and eventually Zeus. It
meant bright, brilliant sky. This deity is a being of arbitrary and willful
omnipotence; the ruler on earth is picked by the deity and is the vicar
of Omnipotent Will on earth. This means you must accept whatever
happens: it leads, of course, to fatalism, although the people in these
societies frequently don’t accept that in their actions.

This idea of Providential Deity has a number of results. There is
no rule of law; there is only the rule of God’s will. This is part of the
heresy of the West. When the Crusaders went to capture Jerusalem,
and their war cry was, “God wills it!” they should have been rejected.
This is not Western, because the Western idea is that God gives man
free will, and if men do evil things, they are responsible. In the West,
accordingly, you get the rule of law. In Providential Monarchy you get
the rule of will. Their slogan became, “one God in heaven; one ruler
on earth,” which meant that Providential Monarchs frequently tried
to conquer the world. I have already said that Jenghiz Khan was the
greatest of them. His government, his army, his whole attitude are very
much worth studying; his organization was a magnificent machine
for world conquest and world rule as the vicar of heaven on earth.

There are no constitutional rules of political succession in a
Providential Monarchy. There are no constitutional rules of succession
in Islamic Civilization, in Byzantine Civilization or in Russian Civilization
— ever. To talk about constitutional law in Russia is to talk nonsense.
Alexander the First left a note in his desk saying that he wanted his
second son, I believe, to succeed him, and that settled it. That was
not an act of constitutional law: it was an act of will. This is still true in
Russia today. It is also true in China: China was always a Providential

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Monarchy. But in the West, where we have the rule of law, where even
God is under the rules of ethics, we have a very different situation,
and we expect to have constitutional rules of political action, including
the rules of political succession.

The Carolingian Empire, whose dates are, let us say, approximately
687-887, was an attempt to impose in the West a Providential Monarchy,
which was a heresy, not in terms of the Western beliefs of the time,
but in terms of the beliefs intrinsic in the nature of Western thought,
including our belief in Christ and in both of the Testaments. While all
the books I read are full of praise of Charlemagne, Charlemagne was
a willful man, trying to do the impossible by conquering practically
the whole world. Fortunately, he failed, and the idea of Providential
Deity weakened in the West until after 1400.

The fundamental reason for this Carolingian political failure was
the constantly deepening economic depression, which had begun
about A.D. 270 and continued for seven centuries. As a result of this
depression, it became less and less possible for Charlemagne even
to conquer the provinces in his own empire, and totally impossible to
rule those provinces. As the depression became worse and worse,
transportation broke down, all bridges collapsed. (I have read a
magnificent account of someone trying to go from Chartres to Paris
in this period. To drive this would take about half an hour, I guess,
depending on the traffic. It took him something like eleven days:
when he got there, his horse died of exhaustion. And he had to do
such things as try to patch holes in bridges by using his shield, so the
horse wouldn’t fall through, and so forth.) All commerce disappeared;
everyone was reduced to living from the piece of land he was on.

Another reason Charlemagne could not conquer great distances
was that it became economically impossible to capture any fortified
building, because the besiegers could not stay there long enough —
they could not take enough men or enough food — to starve out the
defenders. And if they carried a very small amount of food, they had
to take a smaller number of men, in which case the defenders would

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come out and chase them away. Elaborate weapons disappeared,
including most siege equipment and besieging knowledge: all the
significant missile weapons, such as composite bows and crossbows,
ceased to be made: and the weaponry of Western Europe was
reduced to the mounted spearman and his fortified residence. This
military system lacked mobility and could neither protect nor control
commerce; it could not impose tolls and was forced back almost
entirely to seeking its economic support from rents squeezed from
peasant villages. So by the year 900 we had a two class society
in Western Europe: peasants who produced food, and a small
percentage of fighters, who fought on horseback with shock weapons.

The last Carolingian was removed in 887 for not fighting the Vikings
vigorously enough, and for one hundred years there was no ruler. As
a result, the area that had been Carolingian Neustria, between the
Loire and the Rhine, was reduced to a large number of self-sufficient
villages, subject to the private power of mounted spearmen, without
any state, monarchy or public authority. This period, and these social
conditions, we call a Dark Age. There is nothing wrong with Dark
Ages; they are frequently the most productive periods in the history
of any civilization. Any of you who have read Lynn White’s book on
the technological advances of the Dark Ages, such as the plow and
harnessing, know that Western Civilization got a great deal from its
Dark Age. But, most significantly, out of the Dark Age that followed
the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, came the most magnificent
thing we have in our society: the recognition that people can have a
society without having a state. In other words, this experience wiped
away the assumption that is found throughout Classical Antiquity,
except among unorthodox and heretical thinkers, that the state and
the society are identical, and therefore you can desire nothing more
than to be a citizen.

In the fourth century B.C., Aristotle told us that the polis is a
koinonia or community, that is, an organic structure of dissimilar parts
cooperating together for mutual satisfaction of their needs. He said

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a man cut off from the polis is not a man; he just looks like a man.
He’s like a thumb cut off from a hand. It looks like a thumb, but it’s
just a piece of meat. When, through war and conquest, the political
organization of Classical Civilization expanded from polis to imperium,
it was still assumed that the empire was a community, although even
in Aristotle’s day the community was breaking down into competitive
groups, parties and cliques. The attempt to persuade everyone that the
political unit was a community became more and more unconvincing,
although rulers and conservative philosophers continued to insist
upon it because it seemed to be the only way to prevent the political
organization from disintegrating into an assemblage of atomized
and antagonistic individuals. No other communities were approved
of, and in many cases no other communities were permitted. Every
society has what we might call the orthodox theory of the state for that
society, and every society has a suppressed heresy of the state in that
society. In Classical Antiquity the orthodoxy was that the state is the
community and no one should desire anything else. Everyone’s life
should be public; everyone should be prepared to give up anything,
including his life, for the state, because the state is his community.
And if he says he’s going to go off and found his own commune, by
that statement, he becomes a traitor. One of the first ones to do that
was Epicurus, in the fourth century B.C.; Epicurus said all he wanted
to do was to sit down in a quiet garden with his friends and talk —
and ignore politics. (We are rapidly approaching that in our society
today, but we have not yet reached the point where it is regarded as
heretical. But we are like Classical Civilization: we are trying to grind
down individuals into identical atoms in a mass culture in which all
communities are disapproved. And if any community wishes to stand
apart, we will go in by force and do anything necessary to make them
become the kind of red-blooded Americans we all should want to be.)

During this Dark Age, the Mediterranean Sea became a border zone
among three new civilizations, a totally different situation from that in
Classical Civilization when it had been the connecting link among the

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parts of the civilization, so that, for example, the city of Rome could
bring its food from Egypt when it could not bring food from Lombardy
in Italy. East of Neustria, from the Rhine to beyond the Elbe, Europe
became an area of colonization by Western Civilization. But from 976
until after 1200, the most significant boundary of our civilization was
to the north, in a great crescent from the Atlantic across the Baltic
and Scandinavia to Russia.

From this area — much neglected in our history books, but of
vital importance — the Vikings were pouring outward. From 750
to 930 they were pouring outward as raiders, slavers, pirates, men
of violence and virility. Then there was a brief lull. From 980, for a
hundred years, to about 1 080, they were coming out as monarchies,
that is organized state structures. I call this Northern Monarchy.
Northern Monarchies had certain definite characteristics. Where
those characteristics came from I do not know; it has not been
discussed. They may have come from Byzantium or from some
memory of the Carolingians. By A.D. 1000 the Viking bands had
reached Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland in the West, and were
ravaging Western Europe and the western Mediterranean as far as
Italy, while in the east they established the foundations of the Russian
state and attacked Constantinople without success in 941 and 971.
They occupied parts of northeastern England from Scandinavia after
856 and held the English throne under Sven Forked Beard and his
son Canute in 1013-1035. Viking raiders occupied Normandy in 911
and became a vassal duchy of the king of France; from Normandy
they conquered England in 1066 under their Duke William. And in
1018 in southern Italy, Normans of Viking descent, fighting on the
side of the pope, met in battle with Varangians of Viking descent,
fighting in behalf of the Byzantine Empire.

Northern Monarchy is of very great significance; it created states with
powers which to us seem very precocious. For example, it raised a
military force and taxes on the basis of assessments on plots of land,
which in England are called hides, but which are also found in Russia.

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They had standing armies of mercenary soldiers. Archaeologists have
recently excavated four large camps in Denmark, built about the year
1000 by the king Sven Forked Beard, where his standing army was
ready at any moment to embark in ships and go off to fight.

A significant element in the success of Northern Monarchy was
its development of battle tactics. This was achieved about 1050
and included at least four elements: a three-stage battle in which a
missile barrage, a shock assault, and a cavalry pursuit were used
in sequence; a recognition of the significance of tactical logistics,
especially by water, before any attack; the use of a reserve force
withheld from the action until it could be applied with maximum effect;
and the removal of the leader from the front line of battle to a detached
position from which he could control the critical moments of transition
between the stages of the battle. These tactics were much more
sophisticated than the feudal tactics of French Neustria, in which a
battle was reduced to the second stage of shock assault by a mass
of mounted knights with little organizational structure and with the
nominal leader often leading the charge of his undisciplined forces.

The influence of Northern Monarchy and of Norman battle tactics
was stronger in England than in France and after 1066 produced a
more powerful and better organized government than the Capetian
monarchy. It combined three elements: the remaining traditions
and institutions of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy; the feudal type of
governmental and manorial relations as brought from Normandy in
1 066; and the fact that conquest in 1 066 gave the king the authority
to establish practices which the Capetians could not adopt until after
their great disasters in the Hundred Years War in 1345-1360.

In Northern France the situation was quite different, since feudal
decentralization was not counterbalanced there by either Northern
Monarchy or conquest. One hundred years after the last Carolingian
was deposed, a microscopic lord near Paris was permitted by the
seven or eight great lords who surrounded him, and who were much
more powerful than he, to adopt a royal title. His name was Hugh

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Capet; the date is 987. Hugh Capet was the first of the Capetian
kings of France, and he was allowed to take that title because he
was so weak. With the title of king he was also allowed the title of
suzerain, which is a feudal lord who has no feudal lord above him.
(I will not attempt to describe the feudal system if you don’t know it.)
But he did not even have the powers of a real suzerain, because the
feudal lords who were technically his vassals did not perform military
service, did not come to his court to settle disputes, and had very
little to do with him. Nevertheless, the power of the religious aura of
kingship allowed him gradually to accumulate more and more power.

Now I want to say a few words about the title of king. King is a
religious title; it means a ruler who has been consecrated with holy oils
by an archbishop in an archepiscopal cathedral, in a ceremony very
similar to the sacrament of confirmation. This title of king allowed him
to assume certain powers, such as, the king should see that everyone
gets justice: he will seek justice on earth with God’s blessing. The
king should see that everyone gets protection, the king’s peace, in
other words. To the vassals that meant the Capetians should provide
ethical and moral support for their individual and political rights, which
was exactly what they wanted. The interesting thing is that in 1792,
when Louis XVI was going to the scaffold, he still believed that the
obligation he had as king was to support the rights of everyone,
including the nobles and the Church. This was the central core of
the Old Regime and it cannot be emphasized too much: the king is
the source of justice. And as such, he was bound more than anyone
else in the society to obey the laws.

With this idea of legal restraints on the king, I want to combine
something else which may, perhaps, be difficult. The idea of property
in Classical Antiquity is summed up in the word proprietas, which
means possession of all the innumerable and un-designated rights
in an object, maybe with a few specific restraints. In other words, you
may have a car that will go 150 miles an hour, but you’re not supposed
to drive it 1 50 miles an hour. But you can drive it or not; you can rent

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it; you can sell it. That is proprietas. It is not the medieval idea of
property. In the early Middle Ages no one worried about proprietas
in the ultimate sense of possession of a title. All anyone cared about
was specific rights to do specific things or to obtain specified benefits
from an object. For example, some people might have the right to
grow crops on a piece of land in ways specified by custom at certain
times of the year; while others might have rights to graze animals on
it in fixed numbers for fixed periods; a church might have the right to
a customary fraction of the crop; and a lord might hold certain rights
over it, to hunt on it, to collect fees for having its grain ground into
flour in his mill, and so forth. Thus the medieval idea of property was
specific rights, and the word we use for it is dominia, which is a plural.

The obligation of the Capetian king was to preserve everyone’s
dominia, and this included his own property, because it was not his,
it belonged to the monarchy, to the family. Thus he could not alienate
the demesne, as we call it, the landed property of the monarchy. From
this emerged two intertwined principles which became the central core
of the Old Regime in France until 1789: first, the king was under legal
restraints, and secondly, the medieval idea of property as dominia,
that is, as bundles of customary individual rights, was entrenched.

After 1 000, as their power grew, the Capetians were able to assume
certain dimly remembered powers that had been associated with the
Carolingians: to coin money; to call out all able-bodied men for military
service in an emergency; to insure that all men lived in peace and
had justice; to protect the Church and religion; to grant rights of self-
government to municipalities; and to regulate commerce, especially
exports, so that there would be no shortage of food for the people.
Associated with these, especially with the last one, was an aspect
of kingship which came to be called la police, that is, not “police
power,” but the “policy power,” what we might call administrative
power, a significant element in the modern conception of sovereignty.
Its chief idea is that in an emergency or complicated social situation,
the ordinary rules may not work and there must be in the society a

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power of discretion to suspend or modify those rules.

In building up the powers of the monarchy, one of the greatest assets
of the Capetians was their ability to make the title King of the French
hereditary rather than elective. They were able to do this because
they produced sons for eight generations over 341 years, from 987
to 1 328, and the early kings were able to have their sons coronated
while the fathers were still alive. After 1314-1328, by adoption of
the Salic law in royal succession, the dynasty continued under its
Valois branch from 1328-1589, providing six hundred years of male
succession without a serious dispute. The more powerful feudal
lords who surrounded the Capetians did not have as much luck; for
one thing, they took too many risks by going off on the Crusades
and so forth.

As the families of these vassals died out, their territories reverted to
the king as suzerain through the right of escheat, that is, if a territory,
a group of dominia, had no heir, it reverted to the king, who could
grant it out to someone else. In this way the kings were gradually
able to create a superficial territorial unity of France before 1 500, but
the fiefdoms were usually given as apanages to junior members of
the royal family, so this unity was in appearance rather than in fact.
In most cases the royal authority was extended as suzerainty rather
than sovereignty, and local acquiescence was obtained by leaving the
laws, taxes and customs intact. The royal family was less powerful
in these apanages than the rulers they were replacing, who had not
been under the obligation to be as law-abiding as the king and as
subject to the rules of what was right.

In this way there gradually grew up a legalized confusion of extremely
limited sovereignty, because in the Middle Ages any customary right
one might have over a person or an object, which was beneficial to
the holder and had been exercised long enough to be recognized
as custom, became a legal right to be protected by judicial action in
the proper court. In English law this is called the right of prescription:
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the right to do it against a private owner of private property. You may
notice that every few years Rockefeller Center in New York City is
roped off and you are not allowed to walk between the buildings.
This is to prevent you from walking there for twenty-one years and
gaining a prescriptive right to do so. But in English law the right of
prescription cannot be exercised against the state. In France it was;
in fact, it was the obligation of the king to protect such rights.

In France, bundles of such rights, or dominia, formed tenures, which
came to be known as fiefs in the feudal system, benefices in the
ecclesiastical system, and holdings in the manorial system. Each of
these gradually developed its own law, courts and judicial procedures.
After about 1 050 a fourth field of law arose to cover commerce, towns
and merchants; the Law Merchant. And finally, as royal government
and public authority appeared and grew, a fifth field of royal justice
and public law appeared. In all of these, the rule of law and not the
rule of will was assumed. (This opened the way to something which is
typical of the West: the rule of lawyers and judges. There have been
three periods in the history of Western Civilization during which we
have been overwhelmed by lawyers and judges, who tell us again
and again that we cannot do certain things because they are illegal,
even if those things are absolutely essential. The first period would
be from 1313 to about 1480; the second was from about 1690 to the
French Revolution; which was a revolt against a mass of confused,
legalistic rigidity preventing necessary reforms. The third is our own
day, when judges and lawyers are running everything and we are
obsessed by legalism and litigation.)

Although the kings of France were seeking to extend the royal
domain and to extend their authority within the domain from at least
1050, advances were on a piecemeal basis until well along in the
Hundred Years War with England (1338-1453). The English attempt
to conquer France in that war was hopeless. They could win battles,
but they could not control territory. Eventually all they did was go out
and plunder, living off the country, killing people, burning villages,

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seizing rich people and demanding ransoms, and so forth. The English
believed that if they punished the French in this way, the people would
realize that the king of France would not protect them, and therefore
they should turn their allegiance to the king of England. But the English
were quite mistaken in this, because the people of western France
had expected protection not from the king but from their local lords,
and the demonstrations of English brutality made them shift their
allegiance from the local lords to the king of France. This reached
its peak in Joan of Arc, who in 1429 summoned the whole religious
loyalty of France and focused it on the pious, retiring Dauphin; this
enabled the French to throw out the English in about 25 years.

That Dauphin, who became Charles VII (1422-1461), was one of
the most significant rulers in French history, although he has been
relatively neglected by historians, and a recent English biography by
M. G. A. Vale (1974) leaves out almost everything of importance. Most
books on his reign have tended to concentrate on the superficially
exciting events of the first half of it rather than the much more significant
administrative acts of the second half, after 1436. Charles, a deeply
religious man, sought to get down in writing the customary rules of
political life in France with an effective and just royal government
at its core. He established a royal army with a regular system of
taxation to support it. But he did two other things which are much
more important. In 1438, while the war was still going on, he codified
the customary relations of the Church of France in the Pragmatic
Sanction of Bourges; this recognized the Gallican Church as a largely
autonomous society, free from both royal and papal control, electing
its own bishops, controlling its own property, and so forth.

And then in 1454, one year after the war ended — this is amazing —
the king issued an edict, Montils-le-Tours. I do not find this mentioned
in most history books, although it was probably the most important
edict of the Old Regime. It ordered each locality to codify its local
customs as the law of that district. The decree was re-issued three
times by 1505 and was carried out by 1580, when France had 365

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different local law codes based largely on dominia. This meant the king
had condemned France to what we would call legal or administrative
disunity, and it was one of the chief, if not the most important, causes
of the Revolution of 1 789. Accepted by the kings and applied by the
courts, this legal structure so hampered the actions of the government
that the monarchy was never able to achieve a fully sovereign state
and was in semi-paralysis long before 1789.

France achieved territorial unity by 1500, but this meant only one
thing: all France had the same king. Most dominia, including those
which arose after 1500, were legally valid, often guaranteed by royal
promises. Taxes were different everywhere, because they were
collected according to local custom. There were tolls preventing
commerce from moving everywhere. There was no unity of the judicial
system: at one time there were fourteen supreme courts. Almost
every commodity had different units of measurement, which differed
from place to place, and also changed in size overtime. Thousands
of local tolls and fees became dominia, often collected by private
interests. This made transportation costs so high that goods made in
France often could not compete with foreign-made goods over much
of France, and the poor sometimes starved while there was a surplus
of grain in neighboring provinces. It was a realm of organized legal
confusion, good business for lawyers and judges but very bad for
businessmen, with hundreds of different laws, jurisdictions, weights
and measures, monetary units, economic regulations, and small
monopolistic markets.

This disunified condition led inevitably to the French Revolution,
although it took hundreds of years to reach that point. In 1789, no
state could survive which had different systems of weights and
measurements for every commodity; which had different laws, so
that Rousseau could say you changed laws every time you changed
your post horse; which had conflicting jurisdictions; which had different
tax rates, so in some districts the rich paid nothing in taxes while
the poor paid a great deal, while in others the rich paid a great deal,

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and so forth. It was chaos, because whatever was, was custom, and
under the prescriptive rights that custom was dominia, and dominia
was the law.

And as a result, in 1789 we find a solution to a problem which, when
I was younger than even the students who are here, struck me right
in the face: I always had the eyes of a child. I asked; “If the king of
France was absolute, as all the books say he was, how could he be
bankrupt, unless the country was bankrupt?” But no one claims that
France was bankrupt in 1789; France was among the wealthiest
countries of Europe. So if the king was absolute, there was no reason
why he could not use his absolute power to raise the money he
needed from a wealthy economic system like that of France.

That is one of the reasons I studied this subject, and I found that
the king of France was not absolute — he was not even sovereign.
Indeed, he had reached the peak of his power around 1520 and 1576,
when we are ending this lecture, his power was already collapsing
into a growing mass of increasingly rigid restraints. I’ll give you one
example.

The king could not borrow, because he had no collateral. The
property of the monarchy was not his, so he could not offer any of
the royal possessions as collateral on loans. If he wanted to borrow
1 00,000 livres and could put up as collateral a necklace or something
of the Queen’s, which wasn’t part of the royal dominia, that would
be all right. But he had to borrow millions. For centuries, therefore,
since the kings could not alienate properties, they alienated incomes.
This means that when they wanted to borrow money, they would say,
“I’ll never pay back the principal, but I will pay you the interest on it.
Here is an income that has just come free, because the family who
has been getting it for three hundred years has died out. It yields, let
us say 1 00,000 a year, and at ten percent interest you will give me a
million. And if you ever want the principal back, you can always sell
an income of 1 00,000 a year for a million.” In this way, by 1 789 every
income the king had was committed to some expense.

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In 1 561 the king had to find enormous sums of money. (To save time,
I won’t explain how he got so badly in debt.) The city of Paris offered
to guarantee the loans given to him, but they needed insurance that
the interest would be paid, so the Church of France volunteered to
pay the interest. This is called les Rentes sur /’Hotel de Ville de Paris,
and within 150 years, it made the Church of France stronger and
more of a sovereign political entity than the monarchy itself.

PART II: "THE STATE OF ESTATES", A.D. 1576-1776

In my first lecture, I portrayed the sweep of a thousand years that
we are concerned with as beginning with a period in 976 when we
had no state at all. All power was private power. But we also had no
individuals, that is, no isolated individuals. All we had were individuals
so deeply embedded in local self-sufficient communities that the
power relationships within which they functioned were in their day-
to-day activities, and the controls of their behavior were almost totally
internalized in their neurological and hormone systems. So they
obeyed what seemed to them to be their inner compulsions while
they fulfilled their functions in this interwoven community structure,
which changed so slowly that even in a long life of sixty or seventy
years — and, of course, most people in those days did not live long
lives — almost no changes would be noticed by anyone in the patterns
embedded inside themselves.

And at the end of the thousand year period, in the year 1976, we
no longer have communities, except shattered, broken, crippled,
isolated ones. Instead, we have states of monstrous power and
frustrated, isolated individuals; and the state and the individuals are
working together from opposite sides to destroy what we have left of
communities — local, family, or whatever they might be.

Over this long period of a thousand years, the growth of the state,
which is our subject, began with the appearance of a state apparatus
of a very primitive kind, made up of a king and his assistants, who

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eventually became a monarch and a bureaucracy. Around this core,
there gradually accumulated sufficient activities to make what we
would regard as a public authority and, ultimately, a state. The mark of
that process can be most clearly indicated, I think, by the development
of what we call sovereignty. Without sovereignty, I do not think we
could say that a state is much of a state, although we might call it
one. There has been a great deal of talk about sovereignty in books
— not very much, unfortunately, in history books — but no one has
ever bothered to define it. From my study of the growth of the state,
I have been able, it seems to me, to put together what sovereignty
consists of, historically, in the tradition of our Western Civilization. To
me, sovereignty seems to have eight functions or aspects, and I will
define them for you in the approximate order in which they appeared.

1. All human needs require that a person live and cooperate with
other people for satisfaction. None of us can satisfy any significant
human needs by acting alone in a state of nature. The two fundamental
needs men had from the beginning are, first, that the group within
which a community is functioning and satisfying the needs of its
members must be defended from outside attack. So the first aspect
of sovereignty is defense.

2. Secondly, disputes and conflicts within the group must be settled,
so that insiders cooperate rather than fight with one another and
open themselves to enemy attack. Thus defense against outsiders
is first; settling disputes among insiders is second.

3. The third one is very difficult to talk about. Years ago, I gave
a whole course on it: the administrative power. The French word
for it — and most of my study of public authority was done in the
French language and in French public law — is la police. It does not
mean “police,” it rather means “policy,” and I suppose it would best
be defined as the power to take those discretionary actions which
are necessary for the continued existence of the community. In the
Middle Ages and in the Dark Age with which I began, one of the
chief needs was that the food supply not be interrupted, and by the

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early eighteenth century, in France, if you said “la police,” it meant
control of the grain trade. However, in strict legal understanding
it meant much more. For example, it meant, “What emergency
measures would be taken and who would order them if a plague
appeared? The dead must be buried the same day. Everyone must
get a swine flu injection.” And things of this kind. Notice: it’s nothing
you can designate. But administrative power is a most significant
power, and when I taught the subject, I shocked the students by
saying that in my opinion it is almost the most important of the eight
aspects of sovereignty, and there is no provision for it whatever in
the Constitution of the United States.

When people talked in terms of three branches or aspects of
government, they tended to call the administrative power “the
headless fourth branch of the government.” Around 1930, Lord
Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice of England, wrote a book entitled,
The New Despotism: The Headless Fourth Branch of Government,
and yet I could show him that a thousand years before his book, this
power, la police, had existed as one of the attributes necessary to
keep a community or a group of people cooperating and functioning
together. I want to emphasize that this power is discretionary. The
finest example I can give you is a police officer directing traffic at
a busy intersection: he has the power to start and stop the traffic
as he sees fit, and can enforce his decisions with the power of the
state. This does not obey any of the rules of public authority which
the common lawyers of today insist are necessary. (But I might as
well keep my passion on that subject for the third lecture, which will
include the period when the efforts to create administrative power in
this country were destroyed. The first effort was the establishment
of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1889, but it has since
been paralyzed and made impossible in a number of ways, such
as the insistence that such commissions must use the procedures
of the common law courts, which is nonsense in discretionary
power. It’s as if you asked a policeman directing traffic down here

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at the Key Bridge end of M Street to obey common law procedural
requirements.)

4. The fourth is quite obvious: the taxing power, mobilizing
resources for public purposes. Notice that the French government
did not have the taxing power when the French Revolution began
in 1789. But I’ll get back to that.

5. The fifth is legislative power. This has always been confusing
because for many centuries, and certainly in 976, there was no
legislative power and yet there were laws and rules. The reason
is that in a society dominated by communities, in which personal
behavior is regulated largely by internalized controls, the rules are
not made by an outsider. You discover the rules by observing how
people act. Accordingly, in the early history of Western Civilization,
the law was found and not made, and it was a very drastic innovation
when we shifted from finding the law to making the law. We have not
really made that transition completely in the common law countries
even yet: we still say that the judges are finding the law by looking
back to previous decisions.

When the royal judges first began to go around England trying
cases, they never proclaimed or imposed the law; they gathered
together a group of sworn local people and asked, “What do you do
in a case like this?” Generally, the jury, as we call them, could give
an answer based on local custom, but in some cases they would
look puzzled and say, “No one here remembers such a case.” Let’s
say it was arson or something of the kind. Then the judges would
say, “In traveling around England trying cases, we have found that
the most common rule is this — ” and thus they established the
common law. The common law in England was the law the royal
judges discovered by going around and finding out what the local
customary law was, and filling in the gaps with what was common
to England. Thus the common law in England was a royal creation,
through local custom.

In France, as I showed you last time, the law was the codification

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of local customs in all their diversity. I will say very little more about
the legislative process, but the first examples of writing down the
laws were not regarded as making new rules at all: they were simply
promulgations of customs. It took centuries before people realized
that we did have a legislative process going on and were, in fact,
making new rules. That’s the fifth aspect, legislation.

6. The sixth aspect we might as well call the executive, the
enforcement of law and judicial decisions. It is of relatively little
importance in the early history of a civilization. But executive action
became increasingly necessary as time went on, communities
disintegrated, and peoples’ behavior became less subject to
internalized controls and more subject to external controls such
as force, duress, threats, fines, restitution, or other kinds of outside,
external pressure. Today we think almost entirely in terms of law
and order. If someone campaigns for the Presidency on a platform
of Law and Order, he means that he will intensify the external
controls upon behavior of which people do not approve. That is
executive power.

The last two aspects of sovereignty are of tremendous importance,
and they are, perhaps, the most significant today. And yet they are
rarely discussed in connection with sovereignty.

7. The seventh is money control. I pointed out last time that from
the beginning, back to 500 B.C., the coinage and control of money
was one of the attributes of royalty. Today, of course, it includes
much more than just coinage: it means the creation and control
of money and credit, and in the English-speaking world these are
not a part of sovereignty. They are in private hands, even though
they are the most important powers that exist in a society such as
ours today.

8. And the last aspect of sovereignty is the incorporating power;
the right to say that a group of people is a single legal entity, that
is, to create corporations. This did not exist in the English-speaking
world until quite recently. It always existed in the Roman Law.

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One of the distinctive things about the Roman Law was that only
the imperium — public authority — and individuals existed. If any
other legal groups existed — and by legal, I mean they had the
right to own property and to sue and be sued in the courts — then
they had to have some kind of a charter from the Imperial power
to justify this. With the fall of Rome that power of incorporation
ceased entirely, and corporations of the year 970 had no charters
of incorporation. There were thousands of them across Europe,
many of them ecclesiastical, but other kinds as well. Because of
their lack of charters, it was never quite clear, for example, whether
each diocese or each parish was a corporation; generally, each
monastery or convent was considered to be a corporation.

All right, those are the eight aspects of sovereignty. Once I have
defined them in this way, it will be quite clear to you that when I come
to the end of tonight’s lecture in 1 789, very few states in Europe will
have all of them. Indeed, when I began the lecture tonight in 1576,
almost no states in Europe had all of them. However, if a state had six
or so of them, we might say it was a sovereign state or a sovereign
entity.

Now, our next problem is this: How was it possible to build up
a sovereign entity around the basic administrative core? Unless
something of an administrative nature already existed, it could hardly
be expected that the attributes of sovereignty could accumulate.
Although there were a few exceptions, such as city-states like Venice,
which did not have a monarch, the basic core in landed territories
was a monarch and his assistants, which I will call a bureaucracy.
In accumulating sovereignty, the king and his bureaucrats needed
allies outside: they needed money and they needed personnel, that
is, a group of people who could read, write, keep records, handle
cases of justice in the courts, and keep track of the money in the
treasury. These officials would have seals to indicate that they were
doing their jobs by authority of the king. (The study of seals is quite

interesting. I’ve been in archives where seals were lying around loose
on the floor, and I did want to pick up a couple. One in particular was
a beautiful seal of green wax — Henry the Second, I believe it was
— but they would let me take only two that were lying there. They
were papal bulls of the late medieval period that had somehow been
cut off. Papal bulls are only as big as a quarter, and they’re lead, with
garish yellow and red silk strings attaching them to the document,
which break off quite easily.)

The gradual economic expansion and growth of these thousand
years, with the resulting social changes, made it possible for the
monarchy to find allies. I don’t believe I will take the time to write them
on the board here, but, at the beginning, all we have are lords and
serfs, a two-class society. Then, when the king began to appear with
his bureaucracy — and we’ll put him outside the classes — the lords
separated in the eleventh century as a result of the Investiture struggle
into the lords spiritual, that is the clergy, and the lords temporal, what
we would call the nobility; with the peasants, we have a three-class
system. Eventually, the beginnings of commerce and the growth of
towns gave rise to a middle class, the merchants, the burghers — and
you would put them in there — so you now have peasants, burghers,
nobles, clergy, and above it all, the king with his bureaucracy. You
would have those clearly established by the year 1300. Within fifty
years, when they reached a great crisis, you have an additional one,
city craftsmen in guilds: woodworkers, leather-workers, people of this
kind. You might also make a distinction in this period and say that not
all landlords were noble; there were lesser landlords, who were not
noble. In England they were a vitally important group that is frequently
called the gentry. That would be, let us say, around 1400 or 1450,
and thus you would have the clergy, the nobles, gentry, burghers,
craftsmen, peasants. And then, if you come up past tonight’s lecture,
into the 1 9th century, you would find a new kind of bourgeoisie in the
city, the industrial bourgeoisie, and this created a new working class
in the city, the proletariat, while craftsmen were being pushed aside.

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The monarch had to find allies down below, in order to accumulate
powers to use when he was resisted. His first alliance was with
the clergy, and he was resisted by the nobility. But soon the clergy
and nobility allied together, and he was resisted by them jointly. He
then found allies in the bourgeoisie, the merchants or the sons of
merchants, who could read and write and count, and indeed were
much more loyal to the king than any clergy had ever been. In England
and other places, the kings found allies among the gentry. In Eastern
Europe, the Junkers, younger sons of the landed class, became the
prince’s officials. Notice that at no time, at least in the period covered
by the first two lectures, did the king find any allies worth talking about
in what was really the most important group in society, the peasants,
who were producing the food for everyone else. One of the discoveries
I have made in my ten years of study on this subject has been that
it is no use to be in possession of something essential and expect
it to be a source of power. If you examine the basic human needs,
such as food and I assume, sex, perhaps health, you will never find
that those who possess these or provide others with them have been
able to obtain enough power to play any role in political action. So
we will leave the peasants out of our discussion.

Thus, not all of these groups obtained status and became a focus
of political authority. Those that did form the subtitle of the lecture
tonight: Estates. The number of Estates in a society is no real sign
of the number of social classes. I have given you six social classes
that existed in many places, let us say, in 1789. However, I do not
know any country with six Estates. In England they had two, the lords
temporal and spiritual, and the commons. The commons was made up
of gentry from the shires and the bourgeoisie from the municipalities.
England, then, had four classes but only two houses. In France you
will find they had three Estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the rest,
called the Third, which did provide a certain representation for the
peasants. But, as you certainly know, the so-called Estates-General
did not meet in France for 1 75 years. After 1614, it was not called to

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assemble until the king was forced to call it in 1789, and that’s what
started the French Revolution. It wasn’t called because the king did
not want more problems than he already had, and he would have
had more. If you go farther east in Europe, you will find places where
there are four or five Estates, and in the course of history some of
these changed: groups were eliminated until the number was reduced.

My next point is extraordinarily complex. I have to make a distinction,
which I have already been developing, that as you go eastward
across Europe, the situation is quite different. I have already shown
you one difference between England and France. But there are two
other zones with which we must deal. France goes from the English
Channel to the Rhine. Western Germany goes from the Rhine to the
Elbe River. Eastern Europe goes from the Elbe River to the Pinsk
Marshes or the Pripet River, which is considerably east of Warsaw.
It is the natural boundary between Europe and Asia and is very close
to the actual boundary today between Russia and Poland. These four
zones had totally different experiences, depending on what happened
to their Estates, and these experiences were crucial in what happened
to monarchical authority and state power. So I think it is perfectly
justifiable to call these two hundred years the Age of Estates.

I usually introduced these four zones by comparing them to a ham
and cheese sandwich: that is to say, England and Eastern Europe
are similar in certain ways, although very different in others, while
France and West Germany resemble one another more than they
do England or Eastern Europe. We might say it is a ham and cheese
sandwich made with one slice of white bread and one slice of rye.
The chief comparison I want to make at once is this: England was an
area of large estates; Eastern Europe was an area of large estates;
but France and West Germany were areas of family-sized farms
or peasant proprietorships. These differences of land tenure were
based on a number of things: the system of justice, including the
kind of law, the group in society which controlled the judges, and
the method of studying the law; the history of serfdom; and the fate

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of towns, guild and other corporative bodies. I will discuss these in
more detail in a moment.

Generally, in the period of Estates, government functions were not
centralized; they were not uniform; they were assigned to different
persons, different groups, different boards, different committees, on
an ad hoc basis, without any rational distinctions such as we would
accept, and this situation existed, in many cases, even on the low
levels of villages or parishes, although peasants and parish priests
were very infrequently found on these governing boards.

Well into the period we are concerned with this evening, dynastic
monarchy was essentially a personal thing. In the beginnings of
Western Civilization, we had feudalism with no monarchy, or no
monarchy of any significance. The next period we call feudal
monarchy, when allegiance and loyalty were owed to the monarch
only by his vassals. Following that, we have the period we are dealing
with tonight, dynastic monarchy, in which loyalty and allegiance were
due to the dynasty to which the monarch belonged — the Tudors
or the Bourbons or the Hohenzollerns — but always on a personal
basis. Treason was disloyalty to a person or to the dynasty; it was not
disloyalty to the state, to the community, or to the territory in which
people lived. However, by the period from 1576 to 1776, loyalty was
expected from all people who were active political participants. That
would probably be much less than twenty percent of the population,
because, as I said, it still included no peasants, who were at least
eighty percent of the people in Europe. And there were other groups,
too, who were not included.

A general rule you might keep in mind is that the more extensive the
power — that is, the greater acreage you had — the less intense it
was: extension at the sacrifice of intention. By intention I mean how
far down into the society the royal power could go. In the period
we are covering tonight, you will find almost no country in Europe
in which the royal power interfered with the behavior of peasants. I
won’t go further with this subject. I could give you a periodization of

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it, but there’s no point in it.

Now we will look at these four zones in more detail.

In England, sovereignty was achieved early. I want to emphasize
that England, by 1400, did have what I would call a sovereign state.
That state, however, was not in the hands of the king, but instead
was controlled by a joint corporation known technically as Rex in
Parliamento, the king in parliament. And this possessor of sovereignty
was, I am quite sure, although I haven’t investigated it exhaustively,
not just English, but an aspect of Northern Monarchy. You will find,
for example, the oldest parliament in the world today — more than
a thousand years old — is in Iceland, and others are in such places
as Norway and Denmark. This idea of a ruler having the power to do
almost anything, if the parliament agrees, is also the basic background
of a tremendous political power like that of Gustavus Adolphus in
1630, in the Thirty Years War.

Serfdom ended in England by 1300, simply because the peasants,
instead of working on the lord’s land a couple of days a week, began
to pay him money, say a penny a day. They made an agreement:
“You won’t have to work for me any more — and I’m just as glad
because I’m not going to grow food, I’m going to raise sheep for wool,
or something of this kind. So if you owe me two days work a week,
give me two pennies a week instead.” This ultimately ended serfdom,
but it also meant that, through judicial interpretation, the peasants
lost their rights in the land they worked, and that land became the
large estates of the English aristocracy.

In the Middle Ages, if we go back for a moment to 976, no one owned
the land; people had rights of usage in the land. When William the
Conqueror, in 1087, sent out his officials for the Domesday survey,
they asked, “Of whom is this land held? Who holds it? What people
live upon it? What obligations do they have?” But eventually some
troublemaker — and, according to Rousseau, he should have been
struck dead — asked, “Who owns this land?” That is, who has
proprietas in this land? The question should never have been asked.

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They should have continued to ask, “What dominia exist in this land,
and who owns them?” But when the question, “Who own this land?”
was asked in England, the judges — and I will show you why in a
moment — answered that the peasants’ payment to the lords was
rent, and from that they reasoned that the lords must own the land
and the peasants had no rights in it.

Clearly, how judges were recruited was of the utmost importance.
How did an Englishman become a judge? Did he have to know
the law? And if he had to know the law, how did he learn it? The
gentry were unpaid members of Parliament; they were also unpaid
local magistrates, the Justices of the Peace and so forth. The local
Justice of the Peace in England, which was the lowest level of justice
throughout this period and into the twentieth century, was not expected
to know the law. But royal judges were expected to know the common
law, the law that was found. If an English gentleman wanted to learn
the law, he did not go to a law school and certainly not to a university,
because the common law was not taught in universities. It was taught
in four very expensive eating clubs in Westminster, the Inns of Court:
the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn, and Grey’s Inn.
These were the places where the judges and lawyers who were
trying cases in Westminster spent the evenings during the judicial
sessions. Not only did they discuss the cases that were going on
each day, but men who were regarded as authorities gave discussions
afterwards in the lounge in regard to contracts or whatever it might be,
and by eating meals there, it was possible to pick up the necessary
knowledge of the law. But this was expensive; it required hundreds
of guineas, which would be hundreds of dollars in our language. Only
the landed oligarchy could afford it, and only people who were lawyers
and had passed the bar through this process could become judges.
So in much of English history, there was a very small and expensive
educational loophole through which people could work their way to
positions of power, and the result was that only those men who had
affluent parents could become lawyers and judges. And until the end

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of this lecture, at least until 1776, the only affluent people would be
the gentry landlord class. Their eldest son took over their estates;
the second son went, perhaps, into the army or the navy, or found a
place in the Church, a living, as they called it; and the third son would
go to the Inns of Court and try to become a lawyer.

By 1776 — and this will conclude my discussion of England, which
is very brief, and as you can see, inadequate — there was a landed
oligarchy in England. That landed oligarchy controlled the Parliament:
it had taken it away from the king in the civil wars of the seventeenth
century. It also controlled the court system and the interpretation of the
law. Naturally, when any dispute arose, “What rights does someone
have in this piece of land?” they invariably decided in favor of the
landlord group and against any other group, above all, any peasants.
As a result, England’s rural areas became depopulated. In the early
eighteenth century, Goldsmith wrote “The Deserted Village.” “Sweet
Auburn, loveliest village of the plain...” — but there’s no one there. Or
if you read “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” once again, there’s no
one around. The whole countryside was deserted by the eighteenth
century. The people came to America, or they went to other places,
and this eventually gave us the British Empire.

France I will save, because I want to end up with France.

Now let us look at West Germany, where there was a totally different
situation. In the western part of Europe they had what in my day at
Harvard we called “Ren and Ref,” Renaissance and Reformation.
But in Germany they had “Ren and Ref and Rec” — the Reception
— because they generally adopted the Roman law in the sixteenth
century. This meant that if the prince could make Roman law be
obeyed, he became sovereign, and he used his power to protect
the landholdings of the peasantry, rather than to protect the rights of
the nobles or the clergy, although serfdom still existed in Germany in
1 800, and only the defeat by Napoleon made them decide to abolish
it, in approximately 1 808. Furthermore, as a result of the Renaissance,
the prince in Western Germany became head of the Church, which

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was also an imitation of Roman law: the Roman Emperor was the
Supreme Pontiff, Pontifex Maximus, the head of all the priests in the
Roman religious system.

Most of the princes of Germany were not kings, because they
could not adopt the title of king in the Holy Roman Empire without
the permission of the Emperor, and the Emperor would not allow
that unless he was bribed or was sure he could trust the family of
the prince. He could trust the Wittelsbachs, so he allowed them to
be kings of Bavaria. But he could not trust the Hohenzollems, who
were Electors of Brandenburg, so when they wanted to take the title
of king in 1701, they could do so only in Prussia, which is outside the
Holy Roman Empire. And the correct title was not King of Prussia,
although that was adopted within 100 years; it was King in Prussia.

In West Germany the Emperor was elective, and so the same thing
happened to him as happened to all elected kings and princes: he had
to make concessions and go into debt to get the money and votes he
needed in order to be elected Emperor. Thus the Empire disintegrated
into principalities which the Emperor could not control. The Emperor
continued to exist until 1 808, when his title was changed by Napoleon
from Holy Roman Emperor to Hapsburg Emperor of Austria, but
all the rights and powers of the Hapsburgs were the powers of the
hundreds of inheritances they had. The most significant of these, of
course, were those of the Archdukes of Austria, but they were Kings
of Hungary, Kings of Bohemia, and many other things, as you know.

The result of this disintegration and the Reception of Roman law
was a large number of small sovereign principalities, some of them
so small that we are told you could walk around the circumference
of the principality before breakfast. And without spending any time
upon it, I want to point out that, in my opinion, the greatest age of
European history in the post-medieval period, certainly up to the time
of Napoleon, was Western Germany in the late eighteenth century. I
think you will see, if you make a list of the great geniuses in the history
of Europe, that they are clustered in that period. I will not attempt to do

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it, but think of the greatest mathematician. Englishmen will always say
it was Newton, but it was a German who lived in that period, Gauss.
The greatest musician, Beethoven — or, if you dispute it, two or three
great musicians. Great philosophers and poets, Herder, Goethe and
others. It was a very great period, a period much worth studying.

When the German princes received the Roman law at the time of
the Reformation, and also made themselves heads of the Church,
they established the following things: the prince was at the top and
beneath him, in law, were individuals. Corporations must have a
charter. Judges were agents of the prince: he named them, he could
fire them, he should pay them. The prince was, in most cases, the
head of the Church, although often he was not aggressively orthodox,
so there could be Calvinist princes who were heads of the Lutheran
Church in their principalities. The Roman or civil law was studied in
the universities. The prince controlled the armed forces, and that
meant Germany was decentralized into hundreds of principalities.
But that does not mean it wasn’t a good place.

Now, moving on to the next zone, in Eastern Europe, the rulers did
not have the money, and above all, could not find the skilled personnel
to keep records, so they couldn’t build up a bureaucracy. They did
not want to create a bureaucracy out of townspeople, and the towns
were few and far between. Furthermore, the towns in Germany
were collapsing into a long period of depression beginning in the
Renaissance or certainly by 1500. Therefore, in general, the princes of
Eastern Europe used the nobility and gentry or their younger sons in
their bureaucracy. But they were not paid officials because the princes
could not afford to pay them, and, naturally, they were administrators
only in their own localities, .where they would administer for their own
benefit and not necessarily in the interests of the prince, the ruler.

As a result of this, all the earlier monarchs of Eastern Europe
vanished, and generally, the state they represented vanished with
them. It’s worth pointing this out. Why did the kingdoms of Lithuania
and Bohemia, or principalities such as Transylvania, or, above all,

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the kingdom of Poland disappear? They disappeared because the
king or prince found himself facing an Estate made up very largely of
landlords, and he could not get the money or the skilled bureaucracy
or the other things he needed; he could not even get an army, because
he couldn’t hire mercenaries without money. As a result, the nobles
were able to destroy him; in most cases, they did so by refusing to
admit that his family had any hereditary right to the throne. (It is correct
that Kingship originally was an elective, not a hereditary title; it was
only after years of dispute that hereditary kingship — inherited by
fundamental laws of the monarchy — gradually became accepted in
Western Europe.) These elective kingships were suicidal, not just for
the monarchy, but for the country itself, because the Estates would
elect as king only that man, who promised to reduce the royal power
the most. We almost had such a competition in the 1976 election. If
we had Ford and Reagan running against each other — in a way, I
would like to have seen that, except you would have to vote for one
or the other, I suppose, and there really is no difference between
them — they would be saying, “I will govern less. I will cut taxes. I
will cut back big government. I will do all kinds of things to reduce
the government if you elect me.” This is what the elected monarchs
of Eastern Europe did, and eventually they had no powers at all.

At that point occurred the military revolution, which began about
1440 and was well established by 1579. By the military revolution I
mean this: The previous weaponry, particularly in Eastern Europe,
was mounted nobles on horseback with spears, in other words, what
we would call knights. But after 1400, these were not successful.
Infantrymen with spears, such as the Swiss pikemen, or infantrymen
with missile weapons such as arquebusiers — guns — protected
by spearmen or obstacles of various kinds, and, above all, artillery
became necessary for the control of the nobles inside a country. They
were used for this purpose by the kings of France and of England.
But they were also necessary to protect the country against outside
invaders. And the Estates controlled by landlords in Eastern Europe

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refused to permit that military revolution. They preferred going down
to defeat with an obsolete system of weaponry if they could be certain
that they would retain control of the people who lived on their estates:
serfdom had begun only about 1300 in Eastern Europe. This is why
large estates, abject serfdom, and the domination of a landed group
became increasingly prevalent in Eastern Europe. As you know, in
Poland the “free veto” meant that nothing could be done if even a
single landlord dissented. That is as if we had a parliamentary body
whose every decision had to be unanimous. All of this happened
because the nobles wanted to stick together in order to get what they
could in their own little areas.

These landlords were opposed to cities and to traders in cities. They
wanted the trade for themselves, or they wanted foreigners, such as
the Dutch, the Swedes, or the Hanseatic League, to come to their
estates on the Vistula River, for example, and buy the goods they
produced with serf labor, that is, grain, wool, hides, lumber, and things
of this kind. As a result, Eastern Europe fell backward into a colonial
area. Its trade and its middle class more or less vanished. The cities
became insignificant, and trade in the cities was largely taken over
by foreigners and aliens, many of whom were Jews: this is the origin
of the ghettos and pales of Eastern European cities. Incidentally, this
process is not unique in Poland. It is very common in history for a
landed group in control of a society to destroy commercial activity and
allow it to fall into the hands of aliens, as the Ottoman Empire and
the Russians allowed their commerce to be controlled by Frenchmen
and Greeks and various others. This is a widely prevalent system.

Another difference between Eastern Europe and the other zones
is that corporate bodies ceased to be of much significance. Guilds
and towns became unimportant, and these are the two chief secular
bodies we would find in Western Europe. Indeed, the Church as a
series of corporate bodies also tended to become part of the landlords
system, so that a prince or a member of a princely family would be
the local bishop or archbishop. In Prussia, for example, Albert of

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Brandenburg, who was bishop of at least three places and archbishop,

I believe, of two, became the Hobenzollern Prince of Prussia. On the
other hand, in Western Europe, the guilds and, above all, the towns
had great vitality and a life of their own, as well as an independent
role in law, in spite of the fact that in a truly sovereign state there
would be no corporations without a charter, as I’ve indicated to you.

Now we will return to France. France is the most interesting case: it
did not achieve sovereignty, as I explained to you last time, because
the king felt obliged to rule according to law. That meant he had to
protect dominia and not insist on proprietas, but it also meant that he
did not have the powers to be an effective king. He had enormous
incomes, but, even in total, they were not enough for what was
demanded of him. Therefore, instead of collecting the money from
all of them into a treasury and then paying out what was necessary,
and having some kind of budget or system of accounts, he got people
to promise they would do something for him, such as a royal printing
or something of the kind, and then he said, “Here is a free income:
it is the Octrois, the tolls going into a city. (It might be Rheims, for
example, or a number of cities.) I will divert these tolls to you, and that
will pay you for being my printer and publishing my ordinances and so
forth.” Generally, at least sixty to eighty percent of the royal incomes
were committed to such purposes, and the only funds available in
any particular year were the incomes that came free for some reason.
For example, if he gave an income for life, it would come back to him
when the person died, or if he gave it for ten years, it would come
back at the end of that period.

Since even this was not sufficient to raise money, he had to do other
things. As I indicated to you last time, he did not have credit, because
he couldn’t alienate anything the monarch owned: it wasn’t his.
Therefore, he did not have credit. But there was another restriction.
If he could get credit and borrowed money, the laws against usury
were still in force and remained so until the French Revolution. The
royal officials got around that in two ways. One was by saying that

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certain moderate payments on borrowed money were necessary
as insurance against loss and were not interest for the use of the
money. But that limit, in most cases, was 5 1/2 percent, which was
not sufficient because it was easy to get ten percent for money in the
seventeenth or the early eighteenth century, and there were occasions
when you could certainly get twelve percent. Instead, they devised
a system called les rentes, the incomes, which worked in this way:
“How would you like to buy an income? Here is an income that yields
50,000 a year. That will be the interest, but we won’t call it that.

If you give me 100,000, I’ll let you have it for a year. That’s fifty
percent interest. Then at the end of the year, I won’t be able to give you
back the 1 00,000, so if you want it back, sell the income to someone
else.” So rentes became claims upon incomes which could be sold
almost as we sell stock exchange certificates. They became one of
the chief sources of royal income, but the royal bureaucracy built up
fantastic burdens of debt in this way.

I won’t go into the details of it, but eventually everything they were
doing in the financial world was illegal — much worse than Watergate.
In order to satisfy the supervisors and accountants, they had to create
thousands of forged and fraudulent documents to indicate that they
were getting only 5 1/2 percent and that the money was being repaid.
They would make a document saying it had been repaid, and then
they would make another document saying that someone else had
bought it — and that someone else was your brother-in-law, and so
no change had been made at all. This is a most fantastic story, and
if you’re interested, I will recommend a book by a man named Julian
Dent, Crisis in Finance: Crown Financiers and Society in Seventeenth
Century France. It was published in 1973. It is an extraordinary, hair-
raising book. The result of this system was that the king of France
was over the edge of bankruptcy: for two hundred years, during all
of the period covered by this lecture tonight, his incomes, in gross,
were smaller than the interest payments he owed, in gross. And
Mr. Dent had to spend years working on this before he was able to

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discover what was going on.

Because of this, the king could not pay officials. He had to let
people take positions in the government and use those positions to
get money as fees. If the fees were not adequate, they could take
several positions, and then neglect all of them and spend a good
deal of time working at something else, as a jeweler perhaps. (The
Near East is like this, as you know, today. Everyone in the Near
East has five jobs and they appear at each of them briefly, to say,
“How is everything today?” And then they go off to another job. And
if you put it all together, it barely gets them by.) The king of France
discovered that people were willing to pay to get jobs like this, so
he began to sell offices that were totally unnecessary. For example,
there were inspections to make sure that the quality of textiles was
up to the established rules. And every time an official inspected, he
examined only one bolt out of a thousand, if that, and then sold you
a tag for each of the thousand. Generally, he would come in and say,
“Let’s go over and have a drink.” So they sat in the cafe and he said,
“Now, how many is it that you want?” And the merchant answered,
“I have a thousand bolts.” “All right, here’s a thousand tags, and at
fifty cents each, give me five hundred dollars.” And they would attach
each one to a bolt. Originally there were six inspections. But the king
discovered that he could name dozens more inspectors who would
pay him money to go around selling inspection stickers, so they might
then have eight stickers on each bolt of cloth, and the merchant had
to pay for all of them. Now this is only part of an insane situation. This
is a totally irrational society, which is obviously crippled in its ability
to satisfy basic human needs, and is, I think, almost as obviously
explosive, in the sense that a revolution is bound to cane unless
drastic changes are made in a hurry.

The king also lost the legislative power, because all the judges
owned their seats. A judgeship became almost exactly what a seat
on the stock exchange is now. That is, if you had a judicial seat, you
imposed fees on cases as a result of your judicial activity, and those

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fees became your income. The value of the seat was the average
annual income capitalized at the rate of interest. So if you made
10,000 a year out of your job, and ten percent was considered a
fair return on investment, then you could probably sell the seat for
100,000. Thus the judicial seats became the possession of a new
class in society, the noblesse de la robe longue, the nobility of the long
robe. This was an hereditary nobility in the sense that the possession
of the judicial seat went from father to son. You may remember that
Montesquieu, who wrote L’Espritdes Lois, had inherited a seat from
an uncle, and when his book was such a success, he preferred to
be a popular writer, so he sold the seat.

The existence of this independent judicial class meantthat the king
could not control judicial cases: the judges would decide them against
him. And this was the group who decided that the peasants in France
owned the land but still owed manorial dues, which continued to exist
up to the French Revolution and were not abolished until 4 August
1789. But they were not of great significance; they were simply a
nuisance. They did not involve week work or things of that kind; they
were paid off in money whose value, because of the inflation, had
become so small that the payment was hardly worth collecting. (We
could say that the whole history of France is the history of inflation.)
As a result, France was all broken up into small holdings into the
nineteenth century.

This judicial system also meant that the king could not legislate,
because if he issued an ordinance, a decree, or something of the
kind, the judges could claim they had never heard of it. In order to
have it enforced, the king had to send it to them and say, “Register
it.” Then they would answer, “We don’t like it. We won’t register it;
we’ll send it back.” I won’t go into the details, but it became a long
and involved ritual. The king would send the chancellor to order it
written down, and the judges would review it. The king himself would
then appear; this was called a litde justice, a bed of justice, because
the king was reclining. In a lit de justice, the justices admitted that

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in the presence of the king they became clerks, so they wrote the
decree in their books and registered it. But then they wrote on the
margin, “Inscribed in the presence of the king — coram rege — and
they never enforced it.

Not only did the king have neither the judicial nor the legislative
power, he also did not have either the taxing power or the ability to
reform the tax system. Since everything was the result of centuries
of custom, the taxes were extraordinarily inequitable. That is, people
who were not wealthy paid heavy taxes, people who were quite
wealthy paid very little — just as we do today, only they were much
more excited about it, although it was probably no more inequitable
than our system, which is very inequitable, if you know anything about
it. The judges refused to allow any new taxes, and above all, they
would not allow one thing — I’m making this very simple — the so
called taille tariffe. A taille was a direct tax assessed upon people;
tariffe is what we call “graduated;” so this is a graduated income tax.
Again and again in the eighteenth century, the king tried to register
a graduated income tax; and again and again it was refused by the
judges. And he went and ordered it, and they inscribed it, but they
would not allow it to be collected. They did not prevent it by saying,
“We will not enforce it;” they issued an order that any Frenchman who
answered any questions about his income would be in contempt of
court. That’s the kind of Supreme Court we need today!

Thus the king lost the taxing power, the legislative power, the judicial
power. Finally, in December 1770, the king realized he was bankrupt.
He was engaged in great wars with Britain for control of India, North
America, and the world and so forth; in seven years he was going to
come to the rescue of the United States in the American Revolution.
He had to do something about the court system, so in December 1770
he abolished it and established a new one, in which the judges were
named and paid by the king, and the rules were greatly simplified.
It wouldn’t work. Why? Because he refused to act illegally, and he
admitted that those judicial seats he had abolished were private

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property and therefore he had to pay the judges the value of their
seats. And he could not get the money because he could not tax.
Furthermore; no one would take cases to the new courts because
they said, “Well, we know he has no money. He can’t pay the value
of the old judicial seats to the judges, so eventually he will have to
put them back.” And, in 1 776, the new king, Louis XVI, put them all
back. As a result, when the king called the Estates General in 1 789, it
was at the insistence of the Parliament, the Supreme Court of Paris.

Now I should mention one last thing, the incorporating power. I
said that very few governments at that time had the incorporating
power; certainly the king of France and his government did not.
France was filled with corporations that had no charters. Some,
such as the Cathedral of Rheims, had been there long before there
was a king of France, and there were churches, towns, universities,
guilds, innumerable ones. Furthermore, the litigation among these
corporations was endless, just like today — although we have this
in medical science even more than in law today: they keep the thing
going forever because it’s a source of income. When the Estates
General assembled in 1789 and abolished the judicial system of
France, there was a case that had been before the courts for more
than three hundred years. It was a lawsuit between the second-hand
clothing dealers guild and the guild of the tailors of the City of Paris;
it had been going on for so long because it was such a juicy plum for
the lawyers and the judges. (We’re moving in this direction in both
medicine and law, and I hope not in higher education, in the United
States today.) In 1776, as a step toward gaining the incorporating
power, Turgot abolished the guilds. Once again, it couldn’t be done.
He would have had to pay off all their debts, and they had enormous
debts.

When the revolution came, it was a tremendous earthquake. It wiped
out just about everything. When I was in Paris in 1937, I found that
there were thousands of tons of law books and legal papers of all
kinds, and no one had to look at them after the French Revolution

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because they pulled down the curtain: they said, “What was, is over.”
And in 1802 they set up a new system of law, a single book, The
Code Napoleon, that’s smaller than an ordinary Bible.

The French Revolution created a fully sovereign state, which had
all power. That sovereignty was embodied not in the monarchy, but
in the nation, meaning that the residents are no longer subjects, they
are citizens, they are participants in this new entity, la patrie. These
are revolutionary changes. All legal restraints on public action are
replaced by acts of sovereignty. The sovereign power in France after
the French Revolution can do anything, the only restraint is that it
must be done according to the rules of the sovereign power. It did
remain a Western Civilization government, under the rule of law, but
the law was procedural rules and no longer substantive limits on what
could be done. This, to me, is of the utmost importance, because
it leads to next week’s lecture: the polity was transformed from an
interwoven, chaotic, hierarchical system of subjects in communities
and corporations to a system that is a naked dualism of supreme
state power and individuals. I hope you’ll pardon my bad French: “Un
Etat vraiment libre ne doit souffrir dans son sein aucune corporation
pas meme celles qui vouee a I’enseignement public bien merite de
la patrie.” I’ll translate it: “A state truly free will not suffer within its
bosom any corporation, not even those devoted to public education,
which is well deserved by the fatherland.” In other words, on the 18th
of August 1792, the French proclaimed, “There are no groups in our
society. If you want to form a group, it must be voluntary, it has no
legal existence. If you want it to have a legal existence, you must
get a charter.”

This is a return to the Roman system. But it raises future problems:
it says that men are equal before the law. If men are legally equal and
are equal participants in the polity, why should they not be politically
equal? And, eventually, why should they not be economically equal? If
sovereignty can do anything, and law is merely an act of sovereignty,
why should wealth not be divided?

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PART III: "THE STATE OF INDIVIDUALS", A.D. 1776-1976

This is the most difficult of the three lectures I’m giving on the
history of the thousand years of the growth of public authority. What
happened in the last two hundred years is fairly clear to me, but it
is not easy to convey it to you, even to those of you who have had
courses with me and are familiar with the framework of much of my
thinking. One reason for this difficulty, of course, is the complexity
of the subject itself, but after all, the preceding eight hundred years
were quite as complex as these last two hundred years we will deal
with this evening. A much more fundamental reason for the difficulty,
though, is this: The reality of the last two hundred years of the history
of the history of Western Civilization, including the history of our
own country, is not reflected in the general brainwashing you have
received, in the political mythology you have been hearing, or in the
historiography of the period as it exists today.

I will divide the period from 1 776 to 1 976 into two parts. The first, to
about 1890, was a period of expansion of industrial society; the last
eighty years, approximately, have been an age of profound crisis,
not only in our own country, but in Western Civilization, which is the
unit in which I carry on my thinking on the subject. In order to deal
with this period, I have to go back to fundamentals, and particularly
to the fundamentals of human values, and to do that, we must have
paradigms. The whole thousand years, as I explained in my first
lecture, is a shift from a society made up of communities in 976,
to a society today, where we have states of monstrous power and
atomized individuals. I will use certain definitions: A society is an
organization of persons and artifacts — things made by people — and
it’s an organization to satisfy human needs. It would not exist if it had
not come into existence to satisfy human needs. Notice: I do not say
human desires. One of the striking things about our society today is
the remoteness of our desires from our needs. If you ask anyone what
he wants, what he desires, he will give you a list of things which are

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as remote as can be from human needs. In our society, the process
we have been tracing for a thousand years is the growth of the state.
As I indicated in the first lecture, a state is not the same thing as a
society, although the Greeks and the Romans thought it was. A state
is an organization of power on a territorial basis. The link between a
society, whether it be made up of communities or individuals, and a
state is this: Power rests on the ability to satisfy human needs.

Now I will put on the board something with which former students
are familiar. I always call it the levels of culture, the aspects of a
society: military, political, economic, social, emotional, religious,
and intellectual. Those are your basic human needs. The interesting
thing about them is that they are arranged in evolutionary sequence.
Millions of years ago, even before men became human, they had a
need for defense of the group, because it is perfectly obvious that
men cannot live outside of groups. They can satisfy their needs only
by cooperating within a group. But I’ll go further than that, and return
to it again in a moment: Men will not become men unless they grow
up in communities. We will come back to that because it is the basis
of my lecture tonight.

If you have a group, it must be defended against outsiders; that’s
military. Before men came out of the trees they had that need. If
your needs are to be satisfied within some kind of group, you must
have ways of settling disputes and arguments, and reconciling
individual problems within the group; that’s political. You must have
organizational patterns for satisfying material needs, food, clothing,
shelter: that’s economic.

Then came two which have been largely been destroyed or frustrated
in the last thousand years of Western Civilization. Men have social
needs. They have a need for other people; they have a need to love
and be loved. They have a need to be noticed. Sirhan Sirhan killed
Robert Kennedy because no one had ever noticed him and he was
determined that, from now on, someone would know he existed.
In fact, most of these “motiveless” assassinations are of this type.

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Someone went up to the top of the University of Texas tower and shot
something like seventeen people before they caught him. That was
because no one had ever noticed him. People need other people.
That’s the social need. The basis of social relationships is reciprocity:
if you cooperate with others, others will cooperate with you.

The next is emotional need. Men must have emotional experiences.
This is obtained in two ways that I can see: moment to moment
relationships with other people and moment to moment relationships
with nature. Our society has so cluttered up our lives with artifacts —
TV sets or automobiles or whatever — and organizational structures
that moment to moment relationships with nature are almost
impossible. Most people don’t even know what the weather outside
is like. Someone said recently that until September we had a great
drought here in Washington, and four or five people standing there
said, “That’s ridiculous.” We had a shortage of about eight inches of
rain. Because people now are in buildings, it doesn’t matter to them
whether it’s raining or not.

The next is the religious. It became fashionable in Western
Civilization, particularly in the last hundred years, to be scornful of
religion. But it is a fact that human beings have religious needs. They
have a need for a feeling of certitude in their minds about things they
cannot control and they do not fully understand, and, with humility,
they will admit they do not understand. When you destroy people’s
religious expression, they will establish secularized religions like
Marxism.

Then, on the intellectual level: people have intellectual needs. I
used to tell students that Marilyn Monroe had profound intellectual
needs. And when no one would treat her as an intellect or even
as a potential intellect, for obvious reasons, she was starved for
intellectual experience. That’s why she married a man like Arthur
Miller: she thought he was an intellectual. All right, those are human
needs. Power is the ability to satisfy those needs. And someone who
says that power is organized force, or that power is the outcome of

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an election, or that power is the ability to cut off our oil supply, has
a completely inadequate way of looking at it. My experience and
study of the destruction of civilizations and of the collapse of great
empires has convinced me that empires and civilizations do not
collapse because of deficiencies on the military or the political levels.
The Roman army never met an army that was better than it was. But
the Roman army could not be sustained when all these things had
collapsed and no one cared. No one wanted to serve, no one wanted
to pay taxes, no one cared.

The other part of this will require you to put these things together to
some extent. Persons, personalities if you wish, can be made only
in communities. A community is made up of intimate relationships
among diverse types of individuals — a kinship group, a local group,
a neighborhood, a village, a large family. Without communities, no
infant will be sufficiently socialized. He may grow up to be forty years
old, he may have made an extremely good living, he may have
engendered half a dozen children, but he is still an infant unless he
has been properly socialized and that occurs in the first four or five
years of life. In our society today, we have attempted to throw the
whole burden of socializing our population upon the school system,
to which the individual arrives only at the age of four or five. A few
years ago they had big programs to take children to school for a few
hours at age two and three and four, but that will not socialize them.
The first two years are very important. The way a child is treated in
the first two days is of vital importance. He has to be loved, above
all he has to be talked to. A state of individuals, such as we have
now reached in Western Civilization, will not create persons, and
the atomized individuals who make it up will be motivated by desires
which do not necessarily reflect needs. Instead of needing other
people they need a shot of heroin; instead of some kind of religious
conviction, they have to be with the winning team.

Human needs are the basis of power. The state, as I said, is a
power structure on a territorial basis, and the state will survive only

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if it has sufficient ability to satisfy enough of these needs. It is not
enough for it to have organized force, and when a politician says,
“Elect me President and I will establish law and order,” he means
organized force or power of other kinds. I won’t analyze this level; it’s
too complex and we don’t have time. I will simply say that the object
of the political level is to legitimize power: that is, to get people, in
their minds, to recognize and accept the actual power relationship
in their society.

Next Tuesday a decision will be made as to who will be President
of the United States. That will not at all necessarily reflect the actual
power relationships in the United States. If all the people who are
intellectually frustrated would vote, the result might be quite different.
Many of you come to these lectures because you are intellectually
frustrated, and you want to be exposed again to my insistent
demands that you think about things. For example, we no longer
have intellectually satisfying arrangements in our educational system,
in our arts, humanities or anything else; instead we have slogans and
ideologies. An ideology is a religious or emotional expression; it is
not an intellectual expression. So when a society is reaching its end,
in the last couple of centuries, you have what I call misplacement of
satisfactions. You find your emotional satisfaction in making a lot of
money, or in being elected to the White House in 1972, or in proving
to the poor, half-naked people of Southeast Asia that you can kill
them in large numbers.

The state is a good state if it is sovereign and if it is responsible. It
is more or less incidental whether a state is, for example, democratic.
If democracy reflects the structure of power in the society, then the
state should be democratic. But if the pattern of power in a society
is not democratic, then you cannot have a democratic state. This is
what happens in Latin America, Africa and places like that, when you
have an election and the army doesn’t like the man who is elected,
so they move in and throw him out. The outcome of the election
does not reflect the power situation, in which the dominant thing is

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organized force. When I say governments have to be responsible,
I’m saying the same thing as when I said they have to be legitimate:
they have to reflect the power structure of the society. Politics is the
area for establishing responsibility by legitimizing power, that is,
somehow demonstrating the power structure to people, and it may
take a revolution, such as the French Revolution, or it may take a war,
like the American Civil War. In the American Civil War, for example,
the structure of power in the United States was such — perhaps
unfortunately, I don’t know — that the South could not leave unless
the North was willing. It was that simple. But it took a war to prove it.

I defined sovereignty last time, but I want to run through it for the
benefit of those who weren’t here. Sovereignty has eight aspects:
DEFENSE; JUDICIAL, i.e., settling disputes; ADMINISTRATIVE, i.e.,
discretionary actions for the public need; TAXATION, i.e., mobilizing
resources: this is one of the powers the French government didn’t
have in 1770; LEGISLATION, i.e., the finding of rules and the
establishment of rules through promulgation and statue; EXECUTIVE,
i.e., the enforcement of laws and judicial decisions. Then there are two
which are of absolute paramount importance today: MONETARY, the
creation and control of money and credit — if that is not an aspect of
the public sovereignty, then the state is far less than fully sovereign;
and lastly the eighth one, THE INCORPORATING POWER, the
right to say that an association of people is a fictitious person with
the right to hold property and to sue in the courts. Notice: the federal
government of the United States today does not have the seventh
and eighth but I’ll come back to that later.

In the meantime, I’m still on my introduction for this evening, and
I want to discuss what happened in the last thousand years. If we
go back before 976, when you had communities, the main core of
people’s life and experience, which controlled their behavior and
determined their lives — controls and rewards, I call it — was in the
religious, emotional and social levels. They had religious beliefs, they
had social and emotional relationships with the people they saw every

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day. That was the core of their lives. The significant thing is that those
controls and rewards were internalized: they were what was acquired
very largely in the first four or five years of life. When a child is born,
he is not a personality], he is a human being. He is utterly potential.
When someone becomes a personality, such as you or myself, then
he has traits, which were acquired out of his potentialities as the
result of experience over numerous years.

This is why they could get along without a state in 976: all the
significant controls were internalized. I took the year 976 because,
although Western Civilization had come into existence about two
hundred years before that, it began to expand in 976. By that I
mean they began to produce more goods per person per day per
year. You know what I mean by expansion if you took my freshman
course: increased output per capita, increased knowledge, increased
geographic area for the civilization itself, and increased population.
That began in 976, and we’ll put an arrow here at the economic
level to indicate it. The economic expansion was achieved chiefly
by specialization and exchange: instead of each little group’s trying
to satisfy all its own needs, groups began to concentrate and, for
example, produce wool and exchange it for other things. That process
of increasing specialization and exchange, which is the basis of
expansion in our civilization, I call commercialization. As long as the
society is expanding, that process of commercialization will continue
as it has for a thousand years in our society, so that today everything
is commercialized, politics, religion, education, ideology, belief, the
armed services. Practically everything is commercialized; everything
has its price.

When this expansion reaches a crisis, you get increasing politicization.
I won’t go into the details of this. It can be explained in detail, as most
of you, perhaps, know. Politicization means that the expansion is
slowing up, and you are no longer attempting to achieve increased
output per capita, or increased wealth, or increased satisfactions,
or whatever is motivating you, by economic expansion, but you are

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doing so by mobilizing power. We have seen this going on in our
society for almost a century.

And then, as the society continues and does not reform, you get
increased militarization. You can certainly see that process in Western
Civilization and in the history of the United States. In the last forty
years our society has been drastically militarized. It isn’t yet as
militarized as other societies and other periods have been; we still
have a long way to go in this direction. Our civilization has a couple
of centuries to go, I would guess. Things are moving faster than they
did in any civilization I ever knew before this one, but we probably
will have another century or two.

As this process goes on, you get certain other things. I’ve hinted at a
number of them. One is misplacement of satisfactions. You find your
satisfactions — your emotional satisfaction, your social satisfaction

— not in moment to moment relationships with nature or with other
people, but with power, or with wealth, or even with organized force

— sadism, in some cases: Go out and murder a lot of people in a
war, a just war, naturally.

The second thing that occurs as this goes on is increasing remoteness
of desires from needs. I’ve mentioned this. Then the next thing is
an increasing confusion between means and ends. The ends are
the human needs, but if I asked people what these needs are, they
can hardly tell me. Instead they want the means they have been
brainwashed to accept, that they think will satisfy their needs. But
it’s perfectly obvious that the methods that we have been using are
not working. Never was any society in human history as rich and as
powerful as Western Civilization and the United States, and it is not a
happy society. Just this week, I looked at a book called “The Joyless
Economy”, by an economist, Tibor Scitovsky, who diagrammed some
of these things.

In the final aspect of this process, controls on behavior shift from
the intermediate levels of human experience — social, emotional
and religious — to the lower, military and political, or to the upper,

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ideological. They become the externalized controls of a mature
society: weapons, bureaucracies, material rewards, or ideology.
Customary conformity is replaced by conscious decision-making,
and this usually implies a shift from your own conformity to someone
else’s decision. In its final stages, the civilization becomes a dualism
of almost totalitarian imperial power and an amorphous mass culture
of atomized individuals.

All of this is for the sake of establishing a few paradigms.

What happened in the last two hundred years? In 1776, Western
Civilization was approaching a revolutionary situation. A revolutionary
situation is one in which the structure of power — real power — is
not reflected in the structure of law, institutions, and conventional
arrangements. Law and legal arrangements, including constitutional
structures, were not legitimate in much of Western Civilization in
1 776. They were not responsible because they did not reflect power.
Whether it was the English Parliament, which had a legal right to
rule America; or the nightmarish constitution of France, which no
longer reflected the structure in French society in any way; or, east
of the Rhine, with the enlightened despotisms, the laws of the polity
of Europe did not reflect the power structure at all, as Napoleon very
soon showed them. This, therefore, is a revolutionary situation.

Let’s look a little more closely at these.

In England, the laws of the polity established control of the country
in an oligarchy of landowners, the Whig oligarchy. Members of the
House of Commons were sent to Parliament by pieces of land, and
anyone who owned a piece of land with the right to send a member
to Parliament, and could do so whether anyone lived on the piece of
land or not. It was not a reflection of the power structure of England to
say that pieces of land were powerful. I do not have to demonstrate to
you that the legal arrangements by which the British Parliament made
the rules to govern life in the United States were equally unrealistic.

I’ll leave France for a moment and go east of the Rhine. In Central
Europe we had what was called Enlightened Despotism: small

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principalities ruled by despots who had a legal right to say, “This will
happen; that will happen; something else will happen.”

In the period from 1776 onward, for about twenty-five years, they
tried to establish a more rational life in their principalities, but they
couldn’t do it. Their system of weights and measures — I won’t attempt
to describe them to you — were absolute, unholy chaos. They had
a different weight or measurement for every commodity and those
measurements changed as you went from village to village or from
district to district. They also had been changing in size for hundreds
of years, because the power of the creditors was so great that, if you
owed a bushel of wheat to your landlord, all the landlords together,
over generations, could make the bushel a larger measure.

I discussed Eastern Europe adequately in my last lecture. I’ll
simply point out that in this period Poland disappeared, because the
Polish landlord class would rather keep their serfs than be politically
independent. They were unwilling to organize a modern army, with
modern weapons and modern military training, to defend Poland
against outside enemies, such as Prussia, Russia or Austria. As a
result, those three got together and divided up Poland in 1795, so
Poland no longer existed. Under Napoleon there was a Grand Duchy
of Warsaw, but Poland did not exist again until 1919.

In France, as I described to you last week, the polity had reached a
condition of total paralysis. The government did not have sovereignty.
It did not have the taxing power; it did not have the legislative power;
it did not have the incorporating power; it did not have the judicial
power; it did not have most of the eight aspects of sovereignty I’ve
mentioned to you. And in 1776 the government became aware of this,
when they tried to abolish the guilds and could not do so, because
under the law they could not be abolished unless their debts were
paid. The government could not pay their debts because it did not
have the taxing power. And it didn’t have the taxing power because it
didn’t have the judicial power: if it took someone to court, the judges
would say, “No, you have no right to examine his income. You can

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only ask him what he has been paying for the last couple of hundred
years on that piece of property or whatever it is.”

The result was the explosion of the French Revolution, which
produced, by the time of Napoleon, let’s say 1 805, the most sovereign
state in Europe. Notice: Napoleon was an enlightened despot, the
last one in Europe. Anyone who says, as Robert Palmer, for instance,
that France was leading the parade in 1789 in terms of government
and public authority, just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. In
1789 France was bringing up the absolute rear as far as public
authority and sovereignty were concerned. That is why France gets
its enlightened despot so late. He wasn’t even a Frenchman; he
was an Italian; and he imposed an Italian government on France.
Because it was so rational, so powerful, so well-organized, and the
new sovereignty was embodied in a new entity, the nation, it had a
power which made it possible for Napoleon to conquer almost all of
Europe. He was, however, ultimately defeated, as most conquerors
of all Europe have been throughout history: William II in 1918, Hitler
in 1945, Philip II in the sixteenth century, Henry V of England the
early fifteenth century, and so forth.

By 1820, after the Napoleonic system had been replaced, all four of
these geographical zones I have mentioned were unstable, but they
were much more stable and much more legitimate then they had been
in 1776. Now, although I say that in 1820 they were fundamentally
not that stable, we know there was political stability in Europe for at
least three generations after that date, until at least the 1 860’s. There
was a brief war in 1 866 but I won’t go into that. The stability of Europe
from 1 81 5 to 1 855 is something on which we now look with nostalgia.
The reasons for this apparent stability had nothing to do with the
structure of the state, except the degree to which the structure of the
state had become sufficiently rationalized and sovereign through the
period of revolution from 1 776 to about 1 820. With additional events,
the situation looked stable, and these additional events produced a
new Age of Expansion.

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The first of these was the expansion of technology, including the
Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The Agricultural Revolution of
about 1720 and onward made it possible to produce more and more
food from land with less and less labour. The Industrial Revolution
began about 1 750 and was the application of inanimate energy to the
production on a large scale. (Incidentally, 1776 is a very significant
year, and this is not just because the American Revolution began
during it. Watt’s patent of the steam engine was in 1776; Adam
Smith’s Wealth of Nations was published in 1776; the failure of the
French to reorganize their political system occurred in 1776, and so
forth.) The disruption of communities, the destruction of religion and
the frustration of emotions were greatly intensified by the Industrial
Revolution: railroads, factories, growth of cities, technological
revolution in the countryside and in the growing of food, and so forth.

The appearance of stability in the nineteenth century Age of
Expansion was also due to the externalization of rewards and controls.
This eventually brought on an acceleration of the main focus of the
main focus of the activities of the society downward again to the
levels of culture, from the areas of internal controls to the areas of
external controls. If you can be bought, with a higher salary, to go to
San Diego and give up all your friends and associations, that is an
external control. If you can be forced to go there by the draft, that is
militarization.

Another thing which became very obvious in the nineteenth
century was the increasing role of propaganda for the purpose of
changing people’s ways of looking at society, and the success of
this propaganda helped to create an impression of stability. At the
beginning of the lecture, I offended some of you by saying you had
been brainwashed. This is not an insult; it’s a simple statement of
fact. When any infant is born and socialized in a society, even if he
is to become a very mature individual, he has been brainwashed.
That is, he has been given a structure for categorizing his experience
and a system of values applied to that structure of categories. But in

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our society, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this has now
become a propagandist system in which emphasis is put on the
future: Think only of the future. This is the ideology against which the
young people of the 1950’s and 1960’s rebelled. Future preference:
plan; study hard; save. All the things I used to hear from my maiden
aunts: “Wise bees save honey; wise boys save money,” and they
each secretly gave me a dollar as I was leaving. “A penny saved

is a penny earned.” “A stitch in time ” Everything that’s in “Poor

Richard”, the Benjamin Franklin propaganda machine.

Another aspect of this nineteenth century propaganda system is the
increasing emphasis upon material desires. If you had the material
things you wanted — a nice house in the suburbs, a swimming pool,
a couple of big cars, a place in the country, a motor boat, a trailer
to take it back and forth — you should be happy and satisfied. Now
it’s endless — a pocket computer, a citizens’ band radio, whatever
you want.

A third idea we were brainwashed into believing was that the only
important thing was individualism. They called it freedom. There is
no such thing as freedom. There is something called liberty; it’s quite
different. I’ll not spend much time on this. If you’re interested, read
Ruggiero’s “History of European Liberalism”, Oxford University Press,
1927, particularly the first couple of chapters. That’s the English
translation of an Italian book. Freedom is freedom from restraints.
We’re always under restraints. The difference between a stable
society and an unstable one is that the restraints in an unstable one
are external. In a stable society, government ultimately becomes
unnecessary; the restraints on people’s actions are internal, they’re
self-disciplined. They are the restraints you have accepted because
they make it possible for you to satisfy all your needs to the degree
that is good for you.

Another thing that they have brainwashed us into believing in the
last 1 50 years is that quantitative change is superior to any qualitative
attributes. In other words, if we can turn out more automobiles this

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year than last, it doesn’t matter if they’re half as good. The same is
true of everything. We are quantifying everything, and this is why we
are trying to put everything on computers. Governments no longer
have to make decisions; computers will do it.

Another thing they have succeeded in doing is to give us vicarious
satisfactions for many of our frustrations. It is unbelievable to see how
the American people are hung up on vicarious experiences: television,
movies, mass spectator sports. You have no idea what the small towns
of America are like on a Friday night like this, when the local high
school football or basketball team is engaged in competition with their
neighbor eighteen miles away. And what a gloomy place the chapel
or church is Sunday if they lose — it won’t matter if it rains. People
need exercise; they do not need to watch other people exercise,
particularly people who already have had too much exercise. Another
vicarious satisfaction is the sexy magazines; this is vicarious sex. To
anyone rushing to buy one, I’d like to say, “The real thing is better.”

The brainwashing which has been going on for 150 years has also
resulted in the replacement of intellectual activities and of religion
by ideologies and by science. It is hardly possible to discuss the
problems of the historical past without running up against Marxist
interpretations. I have nothing against Marx, except that his theories
do not explain what happened, and this, to me, is a fatal defect. The
very idea that there is some kind of conflict between science and
religion is completely mistaken. Science is a method for investigating
experience, and religion is something quite different. Religion is
the fundamental, necessary internalization of our system of more
permanent values.

Another thing they have tried to get us to believe in the last 150
years — and the idea is now dying in front of us — is the myth that
the nation, as the repository of sovereignty, can be both a state and
a community. This is the great ideological innovation of the French
revolution, you see. The nation can be the repository of sovereignty.
But suppose weapons in a society are such that it is possible for a

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government to impose its will over an area a thousand miles across.
And suppose that in that thousand mile area there are a number of
nations, such as the Bretons, Catalonians, the Welsh, the Lithuanians.
These are as much nations as the ones that somehow or other
became the embodiments of sovereignty in the nineteenth century.
Why did the English, the French, the Castilians, the Hohenzollerns,
and others become the repository of sovereignty as nations: (notice:
they missed out in the whole Balkan and Danube areas.) They did so
because, at that time, weapons made it possible to compel obedience
over areas which were approximately the same size as these national
groups I have mentioned. As a result, they were able to crush out
other nationalisms, such as the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, the
Catalonians — who had a much longer and more cultured history
than the Castilians — the Provencals, and many others. In other
words, nationalism is an episode in history, and it fit a certain power
structure and a certain configuration of human life in our civilization.
Now what’s happening? They all want autonomy. The Scots think
they can get their independence and control oil in the North Sea, and
then England will become a colonial area for Edinburgh. And so forth.

In 1820, thus, the state was essentially unstable, in spite of
appearances. It was not fully sovereign. For example, it did not
have the control of money and credit in most places; it did not have
control of corporations in most places. It was not stable because the
nation is not a satisfactory community. The very idea that, because
everyone who speaks French is in the same nation and, in the
nineteenth century, in the same state, they must therefore be in the
same community, is just not true. The nation or the state, as we now
have it in terms of the structure of power, cannot be a community.

Another thing which may serve to point out the instability of the
power system of the state: the individual cannot be made the basic
unit of a society, as we have tried to do, or of the state, because
the internalization of controls must be the preponderant influence
in any stable society. Even in a society in which it appears that all

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power is in the hands of the government — Soviet Russia, let’s
say — at least eighty percent of all human behavior is regulated by
internalized controls socialized in the people by the way they were
treated from the moment they were born. As a result, they have come
to accept certain things that allow the Russian state to act as if it can
do anything, when it obviously can’t and knows it can’t. Notice the
new Russian budget announced this week: as a result of our pouring
our food surpluses into Russia, they are now going to increase the
consumption of their expenditures.

Also related to the problem of internalized controls is the shift of
weapons in our society. This is a profound problem. I have spent ten
years working on it throughout all of history, and I hope eventually
to produce a book if I can find a publisher. There will be endless
analyses of Chinese history, Byzantine history and Russian history
and everything else, and the book is about nine-tenths written. I’d say
in the last ten years the shift of weapons in any civilization and, above
all, in our civilization, from shock weapons to missile weapons has
a dominant influence on the ability to control individuals: individuals
cannot be controlled by missile weapons. Notice that if you go back
several hundred years to the Middle Ages, all weapons were shock,
that is, you came at the enemy with a spear or a sword. Even as
late as 1916, in the First World War, you came at the Germans with
bayonets after a preliminary barrage with artillery. But we have now
shifted almost completely to missile weapons. Missile weapons are
weapons that you hurl. You may shoot, you may have bombs dropped
from airplanes, you may throw hand grenades: these are missile
weapons. The essential difference between a shock weapon and a
missile weapon is this: a missile weapon is either fired or it isn’t fired.
It cannot be half-fired. Once you let it go, it’s out of your control. It
is a killing weapon. But a shock weapon — a billy club or a bayonet
— can be used to any degree you wish. If you say to someone, “Get
up and get out of my room,” and you pull out a machines gun, or you
call in a B-52 bomber, or you pull the pin in a hand grenade,.... But

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with a bayonet you can persuade him.

In our society, individual behavior can no longer be controlled by any
system of weaponry we have. In fact, we do not have enough people,
even if we equip them with shock weapons, to control the behavior of
that part of the population which does not have internalized controls.

One reason for that, of course, is that the twenty percent who do
have internalized controls are concentrated in certain areas. I won’t
go into the subject of controls. It opens up the whole field of guerrilla
resistance, terrorism, and everything else; these cannot be controlled
by any system or organized structure or force that exists, at least
on the basis of missile weaponry. And, as I said, it would take too
many people on the basis of shock weaponry. We have now done
what the Romans did when they started to commit suicide: we have
shifted from an army of citizens to an army of mercenaries, and
those mercenaries are being recruited in our society, as they were
in Roman society, from the twenty percent of the population which
does not have the internalized controls of the civilization.

The appearance of stability from 1 840 to about 1 900 was superficial,
temporary and destructive in the long run, because, as I have said,
you must have communities, and communities and societies must
rest upon cooperation and not on competition. Anyone who says that
society can be run on the basis of everyone’s trying to maximize his
own greed is talking total nonsense. All the history of human society
shows that it’s nonsense. And to teach it in schools, and to go on
television and call it the “American way of life” still doesn’t make it
true. Competition and envy cannot become the basis of any society
or any community.

The economic and technological achievements of industrialization
in this period were fundamentally mistaken. This could get quite
technical; I’ll try not to. The economic expansion of industrialization
has been based on plundering the natural capital of the globe that
was created over millions of years: the plundering of the soils of
their fertility; the plundering of the human communities, whether they

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were our own or someone else’s, in Africa or anywhere else; the
plundering of the forest. In 1776 the wealth of forest in North America
was beyond belief; within 150 years, it has been destroyed and more
than ninety percent of it wasted. And it had in it three hundred years
of accumulated capital savings and investment of sunlight and the
fertility of the soil. (And now that our bread is going to have five times
as much fiber by being made out of sawdust, we’re going to have
to go on plundering the forests to an even larger degree; this, I am
sure, is one of the reasons why two days ago President Ford signed
the new bill allowing clear cutting in the National Forests. We need
that roughage or fiber in our bread, we have taken out all the natural
fiber of the wheat, of course, and thrown it away.)

The energy which gave us the Industrial Revolution — coal, oil,
natural gas — represented the accumulated savings of four weeks of
sunlight that managed somehow to be saved in the earth out of the
three billion years of sunshine. That is what the fossil fuels are. This
is not income to be spent; this is capital to be saved and invested.
But we have already destroyed into entropy — a form of energy
which is no longer able to be utilized — eleven or twelve days of that
accumulated twenty-eight days of sunlight. And we have wasted it.

The fundamental, all pervasive cause of world instability today
is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all
human relationships and the resulting neuroses and psychoses.
The technological acceleration of transportation, communication,
and weapons systems is now creating power areas wider than
existing political structures. We still have at least half a dozen political
structures in Europe, but our technology and the power system of
Western Civilization today are such that most of Europe should be
a single power system. This creates instability.

Medical science and the population explosion have continued to
produce more and more people when the supply of food and the
supply of jobs are becoming increasingly precarious, not only in the
United States, but everywhere, because the whole purpose of using

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fossil fuels in the corporate structure is to eliminate jobs. “Labor
saving,” we call it, as if there were something wrong with working.
Working is one of the joys of life. And if we created a society in which
working is a pain in the neck, then we have created a society which is
not fit for human beings. It will be obvious to you that I have enjoyed
my work, although at the end of my career I have no conviction that I
did any good. Fortunately, I had a marvelous father and a marvelous
mother, and we were taught you don’t have to win, but you have to
give it all you’ve got. Then it won’t matter.

To get back to sovereignty and the structure of the state, another
cause of today’s instability is that we now have a society in America,
in Europe and in much of the world which is totally dominated by
the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state
structure: control of credit and banking and the corporation. These
are free of political controls and social responsibility, and they have
largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American
society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor,
entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists
once told us were the chief elements of production. The only element
of production they are concerned with is the one they can control:
capital.

So now everything is capital intensive, including medicine, and it
hasn’t worked. I’ll give you just one example. No one has a more
capital intensive medical system than the United States and many of
you may be well satisfied with it. I simply want to point out a couple of
facts. When a baby boy is born in the United State, his expectation of
life is less than in nineteen other countries in the world. And it’s that
good only because our infant mortality rate is better than our adult
mortality rate. In other words, in infant mortality we are about ninth
or tenth; these figures date from about 1972, I think. Now let us look
at a ten year old boy in the United States today. His expectation of
life is less than that in thirty other countries, according to the United
Nations statistics. We pay more than the people in any of those thirty

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countries for a capital intensive medical system devoted to keeping
people who are almost dead alive a few more days, instead of making
people grow up healthy by teaching them that work is fun, by teaching
then that they don’t have to be gluttons — in the United States, more
than half of our food is wasted, maybe because it isn’t that good.
Exercise, moderation and so forth — it’s all the old stuff we used to
get in Sunday school. It just happens to be correct.

Our agricultural system is another cause of instability. It used to be a
system in which seed was put into the earth to create food by taking
sunlight, rain and the wealth of the soil, but we have replaced it with
an agricultural system which is entirely capital intensive. We have
eliminated labor and have even eliminated land to a considerable
extent, so that we now pour out what we call food, but it’s really a
chemical synthetic. We have done this by putting a larger and larger
amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides made from fossil fuels
into a smaller and smaller amount of soil. To give you one figure:
Every bushel of corn we send to the Russians represents one gallon
of gasoline, and then they tell us that, by selling our grain to the
Russians, we’re getting the foreign exchange that will allow us to
pay for petroleum at fourteen dollars a barrel. No one has stopped
to ask how many gallons were used to grow the grain and send it to
the Russians.

In the thirty years from 1940 to 1970, three million American farms
were abandoned because the families who worked them could not
compete with the corporate farmers using the new chemical methods
of producing crops. Thirty million people left these abandoned farms
and the rural areas and went into the towns and cities, millions of
them to get on relief. In 1970, the last year for which I have reliable
figures, two thousand farms a year were going out of production.
These are the farms on which we brought up our grandparents, the
people who won the civil war, indeed, the people who fought in the
First World War, and, in many cases, even in the Second War. Will
the tractors be able to fight the next war when there are no farm

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boys to fight? (Of course, whether there are farm boys or not, they
won’t want to fight.)

In a similar way, by urban renewal and other things, we are destroying
communities in the cities. Much of the legislation of the last forty years
in this country has been aimed at the destruction of families, ghettos,
parishes and any other communities.

All these processes create frustrations on every level of human
experience and result in the instability and disorder we see around
every day.

Now I come to a topic of delicacy: the United States constitutional
crisis. The three branches of government set up in 1 789 do not contain
the eight aspects of sovereignty. The Constitution completely ignores,
for example, the administrative power. The result is that the three
branches of government have been struggling ever since to decide
which of them will control the administrative power. The growth of
political parties was necessary to establish relationships among the
three branches. I used to tell my students that the important thing in
any election is the nomination. And when you come to the election
itself, it doesn’t matter who votes, what’s important is who didn’t vote.
Elections in the United States are increasingly decided by people who
didn’t vote because they’re turned off for various reasons.

As a result of the way the three branches were set up, each has tried
to go outside the sphere in which it should be restrained. For example,
walking over here with Dean Krogh and Professor Brown, I spoke
briefly about the Boston Latin School I attended. It is the oldest school
in the United States, founded in 1635 as a preparatory school. Harvard
was created the next year as a place for Latin School boys to go to
college, and in my day, 1929-1930, it was the largest single source
of supply for Harvard, although Harvard was doing all it could to cut
down on the number of Latin School boys. The chief method they
used to keep us out was to raise the entrance requirements, but we
could handle that. Today that school is controlled by a Boston judge
who has taken it upon himself to tell the school who will be admitted.

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And he has said they must have so many girls, they must have such-
and-such a percentage of blacks, they cannot have entrance exams,
and if people fail they can’t throw them out. And what was once an
absolutely incredible preparatory school is now being destroyed. It
had many drawbacks — it was murderous. But it could get students
through any competitive system of entrance exams in the country.

Another aspect of our constitutional crisis can be summed up in
what young Schlesinger — that’s Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. — called the
Imperial Presidency. When I look at the President of the United States,
what I see is Caesar Augustus. He is commander-in-chief; that’s what
Imperator, Emperor, means. He’s the head of the executive branch.
He’s the head of state, which means he is the representative of the
United States government in all foreign affairs and all ambassadors
are accredited to him. Fourthly, he’s the head of his political party. Fifth,
he’s head of the administrative system, which is increasingly making
all the decisions as to what will be spent and who will spend it. Do you
know who is making the decisions in our Bureau of Management and
Budget as to who will get how much? And the president is also the
symbol of national unity, the focus of our emotional feeling regarding
our country. This is why it is so difficult to get rid of an incumbent
President, either by election or impeachment.

We have today a general paralysis of government in the United
States, especially in the administrative power, by the very thing we
praise most: the so-called rule of law, which should rather be called
the rule of lawyers. Let me give you one example. It is perfectly clear
in the Constitution that a President can be impeached by a vote of
Congress: indictment by the House, conviction by the Senate. This
does not require common law procedures; it does not require judicial
process. It is not a judicial action at all. It is a simple political action. If
you have the votes, he can be removed, simply by counting them. The
horrible thing about the whole Nixon business is that impeachment
will never again be used in the history of the United States, because
every member of the judiciary Committee has to be a lawyer, and

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the Judiciary committee has to recommend impeachment. And they
require all kinds of procedures you would use in a court of law if you
were accused of holding up a bank. The result is that never again
will anyone try to impeach a President. It would take years and be
indecisive, when you could simply have taken a vote and have the
whole thing done in one morning.

There are a lot of other things in the Constitution which are perfectly
obvious, but you can’t get any constitutional lawyer to agree with one
of them. It’s perfectly obvious, for example, that if the three branches
of government cannot agree to do something, it shouldn’t be done.
That was the theory behind the Constitution. Now we have someone
supreme: the court will make the ultimate decision.

I’ll just touch on something else: secrecy in government. Secrecy
in government exists for only one reason: to prevent the American
people from knowing what’s going on. It is nonsense to believe that
anything our government does is not known to the Russians at about
the same moment it happens.

To me, the most ominous flaw in our constitutional set-up is the fact
that the federal government does not have control over of money and
credit and does not have control of corporations. It is therefore not
really sovereign. And it is not really responsible, because it is now
controlled by these two groups, corporations, and those who control
the flows of money. The new public financing of the Presidential
elections is arranged so that they can spend as much as they want:
voluntary contributions, not authorized by the candidate, are legal.

The administrative system and elections are dominated today by the
private power of money flows and corporation activities. I want to read
you a summary from James Willard Hurst’s “The Legitimacy of the
Business Corporation in the Law of the United States from 1780 to
1 970”. He points out that there was powerful anti-corporation feeling
in the United States in the 1820’s. Therefore, it was established by
the states that corporations could not exist by prescription: they had
to have charters. They had to have a limited term of life and not be

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immortal. Corporations today are immortal: if they get charters, they
can live forever and bury us all. They had to have a limited purpose.
Who is giving us this bread made of sawdust? ITT: International
Telephone and Telegraph, the same corporation that drove Ivar
Kreuger to suicide in Paris in April 1931, when it actually was an
international telegraph corporation, controlled by J P. Morgan.

I won’t take time to read all these things, but certain thin regulations
were established in the United States regarding corporations:
restricted purpose and activities especially by banks and insurance
companies; prohibition on one corporation’s holding the stock of
another without specific statutory grant; limits on the span of the life
of the corporation, requiring recurrent legislative scrutiny; limits on
total assets; limits on new issues of capital, so that the proportion
of control of existing stockholders could be maintained; limits on
the votes allowed to any stockholder, regardless of the size of his
holding; and so forth.

By 1 890 all of these had been destroyed by judicial interpretation which
extended to corporations — fictitious persons — those constitutional
rights guaranteed, especially by the Fifteenth Amendment, to living
persons. This interpretation was made possible by Roscoe Conklin,
known as “Turkey Strut Conklin,” who told the Supreme Court that
there were no records kept by the committee of the Senate that had
drawn up the Fifteenth Amendment. But he had kept private notes
which showed they had the intended the word “person” to include
corporations. It was most convenient. The corporation that was hiring
him to do this suitably rewarded him.

Now I come to my last statement. I regret ending on what is, I
suppose, such a pessimistic note — I’m not personally pessimistic.
The final result will be that the American people will ultimately prefer
communities. They will cop out or opt out of the system. Today
everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who
are not personalities are trained to fit into this bureaucratic structure
and say it is a great life — although I would assume that many on

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their death beds must feel otherwise. The process of coping out will
take a long time, but notice: we are already coping out of military
service on a wholesale basis; we are already copping out of voting
on a large scale basis. I heard an estimate tonight that, for the fourth
time in sixteen years the President will probably be chosen by but
forty percent of the people eligible to vote. People are also copping
out by refusing to pay any attention to newspapers or to what’s going
on in the world, and by increasing their emphasis on the growth of
localism, i.e.,what is happening in their own neighborhoods.

In this pathetic election, I am simply amazed that neither of the
candidates has thought about any of the important issues, such
as localism, the rights of areas to make their own decisions about
those things affecting them. Now I realize that if there’s a sulphur
mine or a sulphur factory a few miles away, localism isn’t much help.
But I think you will find one extraordinary thing in this election: a
considerable number of people will go to the polls and vote for the
local candidates, but they will not vote for the President. That is a
reverse of the situation fifty years ago.

Now I want to say good night. Do not be pessimistic. Life goes on;
life is fun. And if a civilization crashes, it deserves to. When Rome
fell, the Christian answer was, “Create our own communities.”

Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen.

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COLLECTED

WRITINGS

DR. QUIGLEY EXPLAINS HOW NAZI GERMANY

SEIZED A STRONGER CZECHOSLOVAKIA FACULTY CORNER

The Courier, December 12, 1952

For the Faculty Corner this week, the Courier has been fortunate
in obtaining permission to print an exchange of correspondence
between Mr. Jay Burke, a student in the Georgetown College of
Arts and Sciences, and Dr. Carroll Quigley of the School of Foreign
Service. We are indebted to both parties for this permission.

Dr. Carroll Quigley

Department of History, School of Foreign Service

My dear Dr. Quigley:

My name is Jay Burke and I am a student at Georgetown University.

I am writing in regard to a discussion I have had with a student of
yours, James Dowling. It is his assertion that prior to the outbreak of
hostilities in 1939, at the time Germany took over Czechoslovakia,
Germany had only 36 incomplete divisions while Czechoslovakia
had 35 complete and well trained divisions. In Dowling’s own words,
“The Czech troops were ordered out of the trenches, ’’shortly before
the treacherous invasion of the Germans.

Obviously the Czech army was more potent than the German army.
If this is so, why was Germany able to conquer Czechoslovakia so
easily, and why didn’t the Czechs resist?

It is my contention that Germany had more than 36 incomplete
divisions to conquer a country of 35 complete divisions. Mr. Dowling

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contends that Germany had but 36 divisions plus their reserves.

Would you please give us the truth of the matter?

Respectfully yours,

Jay Burke

Mr. Jay Burke

Box 113, Georgetown University

Washington 7, D.C.

My dear Mr. Burke,

Mr. Dowling’s statement, regarding the size of the German Army at
the time of the Munich crisis of September 1938, is quite accurate. In
the third week of September Czechoslovakia had a million men and
thirty-four first-rate divisions underarms. The Germans, in the course
of September, increased their mobilization to thirty-one and ultimately
to thirty-six divisions; but this probably represented a smaller force
than the Czechs, as many of the nineteen first-line divisions were at
two-thirds strength, the other third having been withdrawn to form the
nucleus for the reserve divisions. Of the nineteen first-line divisions,
three were armored and four were motorized. Only five divisions
were left on the French frontier, in order to defeat Czechoslovakia
as quickly as possible. France, which did not mobilize completely,
had the Maginot Line completely manned on a war basis plus more
than twenty infantry divisions. Moreover, France had available ten
motorized divisions. Finally, Russia had ninety-seven divisions
and, according to a letter from President Benes to Professor L. B.
Namier on 20 April, 1 944, Russia insisted on a policy of resistance to
Germany’s demands in September, 1938. (See L.B. Namier, Europe
in Decay, London, 1950. p. 284.)

In air power, the Germans had a slight edge in average quality, but

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in number of planes it was far inferior. Moreover, Britain was just
beginning to obtain delivery planes of quality far superior to those of
Germany. In September, 1938, Germany had about 1,500 planes,
while Czechoslovakia had less than 1,000; France and England
together had over 1 ,000; Russia was reported to have 5,000, mostly
of poor quality, but some of high quality. During the crisis, Russia
gave thirty-six of its best planes to Czechoslovakia, flying them across
Rumania.

In tanks, Germany was far inferior in quality in September, 1938.
At that time, Germany’s tanks were all below ten tons (Mark II) and
were armed with machine guns, except for a handful of eighteen ton
tanks (Mark III) armed with a 37 mm. gun. The Czechs had hundreds
of thirty-eight ton tanks armed with 75 mm. cannon. When Germany
overran Czechoslovakia in March, 1939, it captured 469 of these
superior tanks along with 1,500 planes, 43,500 machine guns, over
one million rifles, and a magnificent system of fortifications. From
every point of view, this was little less than Germany had at Munich,
and, at Munich, if the British government had desired it, Germany
(with the possible assistance of Poland and Hungary) would have
been opposed by Czechoslovakia supported by France, Britain, and
Russia.

Before leaving this subject, it might be mentioned that Germany,
in 1939, brought into production a Mark IV tank of twenty-three tons
armed with a 75 mm. cannon but obtained only a handful of these by
the outbreak of war. Up to that date (September, 1939), Germany had
obtained delivery of only 300 Mark III and Mark IV tanks together. In
addition, it had obtained, by the same date, 2,700 of the inferior Mark
I and Mark II tanks which suffered break-downs of as much as twenty-
five per cent a week. Even in 1 939 Germany’s production of tanks was
less than Britain’s. In the first nine months of 1939, Germany produced
only fifty tanks a month; in the last four months of 1939, in wartime,

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Germany produced 247 “tanks and self-propelled guns”compared to
British production of 314 tanks in the same period. From 1936 to the
outbreak of war in 1939, German aircraft production was not raised
but averaged 425 planes a month of all types (including commercial
planes). This gave Germany an airforce of 1 ,000 bombers and 1 ,050
fighters of varying quality in September, 1939. In contrast with this,
the British air program of March, 1 934 provided for a first-line R.A.F.
of 900 planes. This was later increased, at Chamberlain’s urging, and
the program at May, 1 938 planned for a first line force of 2,370 planes.
This was increased again in 1939. Under it, Britain produced almost
3,000 “military” planes in 1938 and about 8,000 in 1939. Because
of differences in categories between “planes, ’’“military planes, ’’and
“combat planes,” it is not possible to make any exact comparison of
air strength between Britain and Germany, but it is clear that Britain’s
planes in 1939 and 1940 were more recent and of superior quality
than Germany’s. It was this superiority which made it possible for
Britain to defeat Germany in the “Battle of Britain”in September, 1940.

The above figures are derived from various sources, mostly
official documents. Obviously, the best source for figures on the
German Army are in the papers of the German Ministry of War which
were captured by the American Army in 1945. At the order of the
Secretary of War (Stimson) these archives were studied from this
point of view by Major General C.F. Robinson. General Robinson’s
report, dated 15 October, 1947, is available under the title Foreign
Logistical Organizations and Methods (210 pages). At the time I saw
this, it was a classified document, and, even now, you may have
difficulty obtaining a copy. If so, you will find its contents on this topic
summarized in B. Kain’s “Germany’s Preparation for War, ’’American
Economic Review XXXVIII (March 1948), pp. 56-77. These figures on
the relative strengths of the German and French armies have recently
been supported completely by the French parliamentary investigation
into the causes of the 1940 defeat. That the British government

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was familiar with the situation clear from the recently published
papers of the Foreign Office of Great Britain, E.L. Woodward, ed.,
Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, third series, 5
volumes so far published covering 1937-1939. Nevertheless, at that
time and since, prominent British political personages such as Lord
Halifax, Churchill, and J. Wheeler-Bennett have tried to convey the
impression that Germany had overwhelming military force in 1937-
1940. This impression has, unfortunately, been generally accepted
in America. From the published British documents we can see that
the British military attaches in Paris and in Prague protested at the
time against this misrepresentation. The most influential element in
this campaign of misrepresentation was a statement from Charles A.
Lindbergh, issued in Paris at the height of the Czechoslovak crisis,
that Germany had 8,000 military planes and could build 1,500 a
month. We now know that Germany at that time had 1,500 planes,
had built 280 a month in 1938, and had abandoned all plans to
bomb London even in a full-scale war because of lack of planes
and distance from the target. Lindbergh repeated his talk of woe in
London, and the British Government drove its own people to the verge
of hysteria by frantically distributing gas-masks, digging worthless
slit-trenches in London parks, and releasing rumors of a grave lack
of aircraft defenses. Although Lord Halifax, Churchill, and others
were informed, about 5 September, 1938, by representatives of the
German General Staff and of the German Foreign Office that Hitler
would be assassinated by them as soon as he gave the order to attack
Czechoslovakia, the British yielded to Hitler and sent ultimatums to
Czechoslovakia, to do the the same (See Documents, II, Appendix,
and H. Rothfels, The German Opposition to Hitler, Hinsdale, Illinois,
1948, pp. 58-63 and elsewhere). The assassination plot, accordingly,
was cancelled at noon on 28 September, 1938. Winston Churchill has
continually misrepresented the degree of German armaments and
was challenged on this issue by Hanson Baldwin, military critic of The
New York Times in that paper on 9 May, 1 938. J.W. Wheeler-Bennett

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in his book, Munich (New York, 1948), says, “By the close of 1937
Germany’s preparedness for war was complete... Her rearmament
had reached its apogee and could hold that peak level for a certain
time. ..’’etc., etc. Mr. Wheeler-Bennett, Britain’s outstanding authority
on international documentation, was a high official in the Intelligence
Department of the Foreign Office during the War, and was, when
he wrote his book, the British editor of the captured archives of the
German Foreign Ministry. His statements, so far as I know, have
never been publicly challenged, and his book is widely accepted
as a standard work today. Its interpretation is not supported by the
documents which have been published since he wrote, including
those published by his organization under the title Documents on
German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, from the Archives of the German
Foreign Ministry. Volume II, Germany and Czechoslovakia, 1937-
1938, (Washington, 1950).

The Czechs did not resist in September 1938, as a consequence
of a series of ultimatums from London and Paris which stated that
if they did not yield they would fight alone. Benes was apparently
afraid that if he resisted, he would be supported by Russia; would be
attacked simultaneously by Germany, Hungary, and Poland; would
be denounced as “a spear-head of Bolshevism in Central Europe”
(as he was even after he yielded); and that Britain and France would
send aid to Germany to order to drive Germany into a war with the
Soviet Union. Since Britain and France did try to attack Russia in
January-February, 1 940 (at a time when they were technically at war
with Germany) and were prevented only by Swedish resistance, there
may have been some validity in Benes’ fears. On this last point see
the documents published by the Swedish Foreign Ministry Forspelet
till det tyska angreppet pa Danmark ich Norge den 9 April 1940
(Stockholm, 1947) pp. 153 and 235-236. My own opinion is that if
Benes had resisted Germany in 1938 and Germany had attacked,
either Hitler would have been removed by his generals or public

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opinion in France and England would have forced these governments
to declare war on Germany. However, none of us knows what might
have happened. I assure you it is difficult enough, in the face of
propaganda from all sides, to determine what did happen.

Sincerely,

Carroll Quigley

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POLITICS

By CARROLL QUIGLEY, Ph.D.

Appeared in the 1957 edition of the SFS yearbook Protocol.

We cannot compare the domestic politics of 1957 with the political
situation of 1 932 for the simple reason that they are not comparable.
In 1932 we were in the depths of the world depression, while in
1957 we are still near the peak of a boom. If any comparison is to
be made, it must be between 1929 and 1957. In these two years
we find a business boom still climbing, the hectic social atmosphere
which goes along with spending beyond our means and keeping
up with the Jones’, in the White House a Republican administration
symbolized by a great man (in the earlier period a “Great Engineer”
who was also a “Great Humanitarian, "today a “Great General”who is
also a “Great Pacifier” ). And in both years, while Wall Street poured
out securities, Detroit poured out automobiles and, over it all, the
Federal Reserve Board, in hesitant and indecisive fashion, made
motions toward restraining the inflation by nudging up the discount
rate. Yes, at first glance 1957 looks much like 1929.

But really things are not the same. The superficial appearance
may be similar, but the whole tone and above all the minds of the
people are different. The difference arises from two things: in 1957
we have lived through the world depression and World War II. And as
a consequence the gaiety and heady optimism of 1 929 are replaced
by the secret worries and fears beneath today’s surface appearance.
This change is reflected in the fact that the graduate of June 1929
was eager to get out into the prosperity rat-race, while the graduate
of June 1957 is hesitant to leave the relative quiet of academic life.
The goal of the new alumnus has shifted from riches to security.

The great change in American domestic life goes back to the New
Deal. The Republican Administration of 1929 was an alliance of

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Wall Street and heavy industry lording it over unorganized labor,
disorganized farmers, resentful commercial interests, and sheep-
like consumers. The selfishness of its policies combined with its
totally unrealistic economic and (above all) financial ideas to lead
America to economic collapse. The Republican Administration of
1957 is again an alliance of Wall Street and heavy industry but,
with one exception, the rest of the picture is different. Consumers
remain ignorant, unorganized, sheep-like, and exploited; but labor
is organized, alert, and powerful; commercial interests are much
better informed, more independent from financial controls; and, in
most circles, economic and financial ideas are so much better than
the dangers of economic collapse are remote. The big changes
are to be found in the relative shift in power of financial groups and
farmers. In 1929, the bankers were at the top of the heap, guiding
and exhorting on the basis of completely erroneous theories; today,
bankers have been reduced from master of all to servant of the rest
and have much more adequate ideas of their own role and functions.

The greatest Structural change is to be found in the position of the
farmer. In 1929 the typical American farmers were tenants who had
lived less than two years on the same land, had neither electricity nor
plumbing, and were largely ignorant of the influences which trapped
them between high industrial prices, low farm prices, high interest
rates, and an exploitative distributive system for farm commodities.
Resentful of their fate, they were politically helpless because the
memory of the Civil War divided them between Southern farmers,
who would vote only Democratic, and Western farmers, who would
vote Republican or for a third-party but would never vote Democratic.
In 1957, as a consequence of the New Deal, the farmer owns his
own land, has electricity, plumbing and at least one car, can get
reasonable interest rates, is fully aware of the parity ratio between
farm prices and industrial prices, and is only moderately exploited
by high cost of distribution of farm produce. The events of the last
quarter century have pushed the memory of the Civil War far enough

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away so that farmers are able to unite their voting impact on either
parry. No longer is the Southern farmer a social outcast if he votes
Republican, and even less resentment is directed at the Western
farmer who votes Democratic. The chief consequence of all this is
that the Republicans control the White House, but not the Congress,
in 1957, and the Farm Bloc independents and third-parry movements
of the 1920’s are no more.

The diminishing bitterness of Civil War sectionalism which allowed
the two great farming areas to come together to support the New Deal
in the 1930’s and to support Eisenhower in the 1950’s is reflected in
a number of other trends. A quarter of a century ago most negroes
automatically voted Republican and most Catholics voted Democratic.
In spite of this fact, as the election of 1928 clearly showed, the
Democratic South would not support a Catholic for President.

Today these old antipathies have greatly weakened. On a class,
sectional, racial, or religious basis our country is much more
homogeneous, the lesser political parties and lunatic fringes have
become insignificant, the two major parties are very much more alike
and both are closer to the middle of the road. And underneath all of
this, the older social and economic system which was exploitative
and class-orientated has been replaced, as a New Deal heritage, by
a pluralist and cooperative system functioning as a balance among
heavy industry, finance, consumers industry, commercial groups,
organized labor, organized farmers, and, unfortunately, disorganized
consumers. As an economic, social, and political system it has much
to recommend it. It is prosperous; it is powerful; it has refuted all the
Liberal Cassandras, Marxist revolutionaries, and motley prophets
of doom of twenty-five or mote years ago. The chief things that
it needs is some salt in the stew — a seasoning of idealism and
heightened spiritual awareness which the Class of 1957 might well
seek to provide.

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FATHER WALSH AS I KNEW HIM

by Carroll Quigley, Ph.D.
The 1959 Protocol, the yearbook of the
School of Foreign Service,
School of Business Administration,
and Institute of Languages and Linguistics
of Georgetown University.

It would be presumptuous for any of us who were his juniors to write
of Father Walsh except in the limited sense indicated in the title of
this essay. He was far too broad, too versatile, and too subtle for us
to attempt a full portrait. For that reason we must speak in a limited
and subjective fashion of how he appeared to us.

One of the first impressions which Father Walsh made on his faculty
was one of great energy and drive. When he became interested in a
subject he threw himself into it, day and night, week after week, until
he had got from it what he wanted. In this process he never spared
himself, and spared his co-workers only because of his unfailing
personal courtesy. Just when these co-workers began to flag in zeal,

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he would return to the task with a new burst of enthusiasm, having,
as likely as not, obtained his new energy from a solitary night-long
vigil over the problem. In this way Father Walsh lived through a series
of lives associated with the Foreign Service School: the Russian
Revolution, geopolitics, Washington “society, "Washington real-estate,
maps, speech, The Institute of World Polity, the Nuremberg trials,
and the Institute of Languages and Linguistics. I am sure that there
were other enthusiasms of which I am ignorant.

Father Walsh’s habit of approaching anything which attracted
his interest with unremitting enthusiasm had both advantages and
disadvantages. On the one hand, his drive and concentration on
each enthusiasm while it held the center of his attention resulted in
almost unbelievable achievement in that matter, but, on the other
hand, once a new enthusiasm attracted his attention, the previous one
became relatively neglected. Having obtained from each enthusiasm
the stimulation and knowledge he needed, he left it pretty much to
its own resources as he turned to something new.

It would be a grave error to infer from what I have said that Father
Walsh was fickle. Nothing would be more untrue. One of his most
impressive qualities was loyalty — loyalty to his intellectual beliefs
and spiritual values, to his associates and faculty, and to his own
past. Whenever he turned the focus of his attention to something
new, this did not imply in any way a rejection of the old. His attention,
like a searchlight shining on a dark, complex, and fascinating world,
moved slowly from one object to another, illuminating each with a
blinding concentration of energy, but as it moved on, left each as a
firm and undeniable part of reality.

Father Walsh’s loyalty was no narrow or restricted quality. In fact,
narrowness in any sense was absolutely foreign to his outlook. He
had an essential bigness about him which reminded me of some of
the clerical figures of the Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, a
versatility, largeness of outlook, and diversity of interests which fell
just short of being extravagant or flamboyant. And with all this went

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a self-assurance which was not egotism but simply a firm knowledge
of where he stood.

The loyalty to which I refer included a profoundly convinced
allegiance to his own country, to his Church, to his Irishness, to his
family, and to mankind. When Bernard Shaw made deprecating
remarks about the Irish, Father Walsh did not hesitate to challenge
him in newspaper controversy. Yet above all he was cosmopolitan,
at home with all kinds of people and intensely interested in them.
He had lived, for extended periods, in Italy, Germany, Iraq, Mexico,
Japan, and Russia and, except perhaps for the last, felt quite at home
in all of them. Close friends from all parts of the world, speaking a
wonderful variety of accents, streamed into his office almost every
day he was here on the campus.

I have emphasized this quality of loyalty in Father Walsh because I
have come to value it increasingly as the years pass. From personal
knowledge I can say that his loyalty to his faculty, a loyalty which
remained undiminished through months of absence and apparent
neglect, was one of the things which made teaching at the Foreign
Service School worthwhile. In time of personal, professional, or
financial difficulty any member of the faculty could appeal to Father
Walsh and receive instant help. Because of his extraordinary
broadness and flexibility, such an appeal could be made at any
time, day or night, on any subject and receive the same sympathetic
reception.

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A favorite pastime of Father Walsh was
his pet Doberman, Prince, in 1943

In 1943, when I had been in Washington two years, the rented
house in which I lived with my family was suddenly put up for sale.
Lacking sufficient cash for a down payment on any house and unable
to find another one in war-crowded Washington, I was puzzling over
what to do. I mentioned my problem to Father Walsh one day, in a
rather incidental way because I felt that it was my problem, not his.
He asked, “How much money do you need?” I answered, “With what
I have, $1500 would do.” He at once picked up a checkbook from
his desk, wrote out a check for the amount I had named, and, as he
gave it to me, said, “I’ll take this back from your paycheck, $500 a
year, for the next three years.”

Perhaps the most typical part of this story occurred a couple of
months later when Father Walsh stopped me one day and said,
“No one else knows about that $1500 so if I were to die suddenly
there would be no record of it. Won’t you write me a letter stating
the arrangement as we agreed it, and I’ll leave it among my papers
for my successor?”

Father Walsh did many kindnesses like that, often to people he knew

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only in a distant way. To those whom he knew even better he was
always available. His loyalty to his associates never wavered, even
when it was not reciprocated. In many cases he must have known
that people deeply indebted to him were not supporting him or his
projects, but I never saw it influence his attitude toward them. This
attitude he held because it seemed the proper one, not because it
depended on any quid pro quo relationship. And just as quietly, when
it seemed proper, Father Walsh struck back like lightning, so quickly
that the victim hardly knew what hit him, but there was never any
personal animosity in these reactions. I remember one occasion when
Father Walsh discharged a full professor who had been on the faculty
for many years. I do not know the details; I doubt if anyone does;
but I am sure there were good reasons. The point is that the case
occurred in the middle of the semester, with courses meeting daily.
It came to a head one afternoon; the professor was fired that night;
and the same evening Father Walsh called up a friend and placed the
discharged professor in another job at a substantial increase in salary.

A well-traveled personality, Father Walsh poses with Vatican Guards.

The motives for this last act were largely rooted in loyalty, but there
was also another factor. No priest was more fully aware than Father

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Walsh of the problems of living in the secular world. This is something
which men in Holy Orders may easily lose. Father Walsh never did.
In this matter his awareness continued to grow until his last illness.
It was really much more than awareness, our late Regent was a very
sophisticated man, fully at home in very diverse social conditions
and completely master of almost any situation. He was like some
legendary Old World prelate, tolerant, wise, and self-assured.

This was a part of his personality which was widely misunderstood
and sometimes resented. Father Walsh enjoyed sophisticated social
life. He was on a basis of personal friendship with some of the most
influential persons in this country and abroad. I have heard him
criticized on the grounds that his association with the wealthy and
the influential was a kind of snobbery or even of social climbing. It
was nothing of the sort.

Father Walsh enjoyed brilliant social affairs, elaborate parties, even
what might be called “high-level intrigue, ’’but he never ceased to be
fully objective about it. It always remained to him enjoyable without
becoming important. He was fascinated by people, but he was just
as happy working alone all night in his study.

This leads to another aspect of this complex personality. Father
Walsh had that child-like quality which seems to be universal with
all very great men. This quality made it possible for him to approach
everything with a freshness of outlook as if he had never seen it
before, even when he had lived through the same experience many
times. This quality appeared equally readily when he went to one of
Mrs. McLean’s parties as when he went poking about in a Georgetown
slum — and he did both frequently.

This childlike quality was the basis for his enthusiasm for so many
diverse things and the key to why so many persons who barely
knew him loved him. I remember one day five or six of us, including
Professor Leahigh, the Regent’s assistant, my wife and myself, were
standing in his office. My wife and Father Walsh got into an animated
discussion about children’s games and why they had been so quickly

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forgotten during the last ten years after having survived with only slight
changes for centuries. We were all standing in a circle when suddenly
Father Walsh went down on his hands and knees, demonstrating the
various ways that marbles were played in different regions and the
relative advantages of two different methods of “shooting” a marble.
That wonderful ability to forget himself and his company was the
key to his enthusiasm and one of the chief reasons for his success.

Some of these enthusiasms such as the Russian Revolution, the
Foreign Service School, geopolitics, or the Institute of Languages
and Linguistics are well known and need not be mentioned. But there
were others. At one time Father Walsh was filled with enthusiasm for
local real estate. Each day he clipped from the morning papers the
advertisements concerned with real estate sales in the area bounded
by Rock Creek, Chain Bridge Road, and Massachusetts Avenue. Each
clipping was glued to the top of a sheet of 8”x 11 ’’paper. Below was
jotted down all the information obtainable on the property and his
reactions to it. If he was not personally familiar with the property, he
telephoned to the agent for information and often went to inspect it.
As a consequence, Father Walsh acquired an amazing knowledge
of houses and real-estate values in the area mentioned. This could
be matched by few persons. I have myself heard Father Walsh ask
someone to give his address and then he would proceed to tell the
amazed individual all about the house and its neighbors: where the
stairway was, how the kitchen was situated, the number of closets,
the relationship between bedrooms and baths upstairs; or the age
of the heating plant downstairs. And as he did this, Father Walsh’s
face would sparkle with mischievous enjoyment at his listener’s
amazement. Once I foolishly asked why he made this detailed study,
and he explained to me with an appropriate mixture of mischief and
gravity that his brother, who lived in Boston and was blind, owned a
house in the area, and it was necessary to protect that investment
by keeping up with real estate developments around it!

Father Walsh was an enthusiastic builder and renovator. When the

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two temporary annex buildings outside the main gate were erected,
the Regent spent a good part of every day among the workers,
asking questions, giving instructions, and planning decorations.
Later, when the Institute of Languages and Linguistics was installed
on Massachusetts Avenue, he spent much of each day, and night,
on the task of supervising the work. He personally mixed paint to
get the colors he wanted and designed decorations for the interior.
Twenty years ago much of the area between Thirty-fifth street and
the University’s main gate was slum, inhabited, to a considerable
extent by Negroes. Directly opposite the main gate, on the south-east
corner of Thirty seventh street and O street, a colored family with
many children lived in a decrepit building which lacked foundations,
plumbing, electricity, and probably heat. It was an offense to the
nose as much as to the eye. This area has now been largely rebuilt,
a process which still continues.

Frankfurt, 1946. Father Walsh is photographed with the German Minister
of the Interior, Hans Venedey, Major Wessels of the U.S. Army, and
Professor W. Hallstein, Rector of Frankfurt University.

It was by no means unusual, while renovation was going on in such
a building, for a passer-by to glance into its destroyed interior and

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see Father Walsh in animated conversation with some carpenter or
electrician, surrounded by piles of broken laths, plaster, discarded
boards, or obsolete plumbing. A strange place, one might think, for
such a fastidious man, and, yet, on such occasions he sometimes
seemed to be happiest. He was a great builder and was, indeed, most
content when he was building either people or edifices.

The Founder of the School of Foreign Service was a regular attendant
at auctions. Sometimes he bought what no one else wanted or things
for which he could see no use himself at the time. But when the time
came to decorate a renovated building, Father Walsh would recall
his earlier purchases and find a place for them. Even today we use
many heavy old tables, book cases, clocks, filing cases, and other
objects which were obtained in this way. When the annexes were
equipped much of the interior had such an origin, including most of
the decorations of the main lounge, where students reclined on the
old steamer chairs of the transatlantic liner Normandie quite unaware
of their history. One product of Father Walsh’s auction exploits are the
two stone pillars at the foot of the stairs leading to the medical school
path near the northwest corner of White-Gravenor Building. I pass
between those pillars many times on my walk home and invariably
think of Father Walsh bidding them in at that auction so many years
ago. Another of Father Walsh’s enthusiasms which is now rarely
remembered was maps. He dearly loved maps and could hardly ever
resist a map or a map salesman. Father Walsh once told me, again
only partly seriously, that he lectured every winter to the ladies of
Washington on the Russian Revolution in order to get money to buy
maps. The wonderful relief maps in Room 9 Healy or the excellent
German map of Central Europe opposite Hirst Reading Room are
remains of this interest. The German map is in two parts; ordered
before the war, one part came immediately, while the other arrived
after the war was finished. At one time Father Walsh used his lecture
fees to engage a man to make hundreds of hand drawn and colored
maps of small portions of the earth on glass slides for a projector. I

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first heard of these when the Regent took me into his inner office,
tenderly unwrapped them from their boxes and with loving care held
several dozen of them up, one by one, to the window’s light so that
I could admire them.

Japanese students listen attentively as Father Walsh
teaches in a Tokyo high school.

The most persistent and most pervasive of Father Walsh’s
enthusiasms was his interest in communication. By this I do not
mean technical matters of electronics, but the old and far from simple
problem of how a feeling or idea possessed by one person can be
communicated to another person. This concern resulted in a constant
interest in speech, in words, in connotations and in all the emotional
overtones in conveyance of thoughts and feelings. His awareness
of the meaning, the implications, and the usage of words was very
highly developed. He went over his own writings again and again,
pondering shades of meaning or the niceties of word order. In some
ways, the basis of this interest was poetical rather than prosaic, for
he frequently sought ambiguity or multiplicity of meaning rather than

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simplicity or clarity, seeking to heighten the effect of the sentence
or to include a larger area of appeal to its readers. Father Walsh
frequently suggested changes of words in the writings of others, or
jotted comments of this kind in the margins of printed books which
he was reading. There can be little doubt that he could have been a
highly successful editor, as he had been an outstanding teacher of
English Composition in his early career.

He would have been an even greater success as an actor. For
Father Walsh’s interest in the spoken word surpassed his interest in
the written one. This interest went much further than the word itself
as a vehicle of expression and included all aspects of speech —
tone, cadence, bodily pose, lighting, background, and everything else
associated with the impression to be made on the audience. His own
speeches were carefully written out before delivery and were read
and re-read, both silently and aloud, by himself and by others. At each
reading, changes were made and notes digested to guide delivery.
All the old oratorical or rhetorical devices which he had learned in
the study of the Classics were used, manipulated, considered, or
rejected. The whole environment was carefully considered — the
light radiating his silvery hair, the gestures with his delicate hands,
the hang and sway of his clerical cloak. The result was a performance
rather than a speech, but the result was also, very frequently, a
sensational success. He gave lectures on the Russian Revolution,
year after year, in Washington, to enthusiastic audiences of paying
customers and, also, year after year, to the Army Command School
at Fort Leavenworth. It would be a mistake to imagine that these
lectures were weaker in content because of the speaker’s concern
with the manner of presentation; in each case the content was as
carefully prepared as the manner, always being geared to the level of
the audience and achieving, in most cases, exactly the effect which
had been planned. I have been told by Army officers who attended
his lectures at Leavenworth that they were highly valued parts of the
course there, and were received with such great enthusiasm that the

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question period following the lecture would sometimes run for an hour
or more beyond the time allowed.

As a consultant, Father Walsh served his country
throughout the Second World War.

At one time Father Walsh’s concern with speech led him to establish
a “Speech Institute” whose remains can still be seen in Room 21
of Old North. There he set up a stage with curtain and footlights,
control booths on each side, a huge clock to guide the speaker on the
rear wall, and elaborate recording equipment backstage to preserve
the speaker’s efforts for instructional analysis later. Few students
who now marvel at or suffer with the tape recordings of the present
Language Laboratories realize that the remote seed of that elaborate
organization rests in Room 21 .

Father Walsh was a devoted student of the United States
Constitution. He was constantly reading and re-reading it, usually
in the Government Printing Office’s large annotated edition, which
constantly lay on his cluttered writing table. This devotion to the

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Constitution was combined with his enthusiasm for renovation in
the so-called “Constitution Room” (Healy 8), another remainder
of his personal enthusiasms. While Father Walsh had a profound
recognition of the more significant merits of the Constitution, I have no
doubt that part of his admiration rested on the fact that a document,
apparently so brief and so clear, could have such varied meaning
in its words as has been revealed in 170 years of history. When he
wrote university regulations, catalogues, or brochures he tended to
seek a similar mode of expression: words brief and clear which could
change their meaning if conditions ever required it.

This tendency to feel that words written to-day must never become
barriers to activity to-morrow rested, I believe, on the fact that Father
Walsh was a man of action rather than a scholar. I do not mean that
he was not a thinker, for he was constantly thinking, planning, and
organizing with a remarkably quick and able mind. But I do mean that
he was never satisfied merely with thought or merely with words. He
felt that thought must lead to decision and decision to action. Thus
he was a man of action and, as such, a leader. In any group, he
became, almost at once, the center of attention and of decision. As
a man of action and of convictions, as a leader and an actor, it was
as natural for Father Walsh to take the direction of a situation as it
was to breathe. And it was always done with such consummate skill
and such elegant courtesy that it was a joy to watch. Nothing that he
did of this kind was ever done in any brash, vulgar, or offensive way,
but always with grace, consideration, and good humor.

In this, as in other things, there was always an aristocratic element
about his actions, his tastes, and even his foibles. When I think of him
today, I often recall the injunction of the fifth General of the Society
of Jesus. “Tenacity in purpose, suavity in manner. ’’That, at least, is
how he appeared to us who worked for him in his later years.

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CONSTANTINE MCGUIRE: MAN OF MYSTERY

by Carroll Quigley
Courier, December 1965, pp. 16-20

CONSTANTINE E. McGUIRE, PH.D.,

FOUNDER OF THE SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE,

AND MAN OF MYSTERY,

DIED IN NEW YORK ON 22 OCTOBER 1965,

AT THE AGE OF 75.

Constantine E. McGuire was a man of mystery. Although he was
member of the American Historical Association for more than fifty
years and was treasurer of that association for six years, at his death
the available records showed little beyond the date he had joined the
association, and did not indicate even where he had been educated,
nor in what university or field of study he had worked. The situation
was no different at the American Catholic Historical Association,
of which he had been president in 1933. Although he resided in
Washington for 38 years, his closest associates did not know where
he lived, but simply knew that he could be reached by writing to him
at Box 1, the Cosmos Club. This was his address for 48 years and
continued to be used until his death, although he had moved from
Washington to Geneva, New York, at the end of 1952. In that town
also he had no published address, but received communications at
Post Office Box 447.

In some ways, the Cosmos Club was the center about which
McGuire’s public life revolved. For decades he could be found there,
almost every day, in its lounge rooms, library, or dining room. Most of
his acquaintances assumed that he lived at the club, but an associate
who saw him almost daily for years told me that McGuire had a house
at Chevy Chase, cared for by an ancient housekeeper. This ministrator

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may have been a relative, for, when McGuire was himself already in
his sixties, he told various people that he was the economic support
of seven very old persons, of whom three were in ill health.

I wrote above that McGuire could be found at the Club “almost every
day”, but in fact he vanished from Washington for weeks or even
months, every year, on business trips abroad, chiefly to Latin America.
Many who knew him casually at the club were puzzled as to what he
did, and tended to assume, from his obvious great learning, that he
must be some kind of a professor. Indeed, as we shall see, that is what
he planned to be and probably should have been, but, in fact, for more
than forty-five years, his chief living came from his work as a private
and very confidential consulting expert in international economic
affairs, especially in matters of international finance and foreign
commercial law. When still in his twenties, he drafted numerous
treaties and other international agreements in commercial affairs
for our State Department and was, for years, economic adviser and
financial adviser to various foreign governments. It was rumored
among McGuire’s friends that he was one of the most influential
Catholic laymen in the United States, had been adviser to the papacy
on American financial matters, and, in the summer of 1929, just before
the stock market crash, had advised the Vatican to transfer its security
holdings here into gold in anticipation of a panic.

While we are concerned with rumors, it might be mentioned that a
character in Somerset Maugham’s novel, The Razor’s Edge (a part
played by Clifton Webb in the film version) was reputed to have been
inspired by McGuire.

Whatever truth there may be in such rumors, it is a fact that at the
age of thirty-two (in February, 1923), McGuire was made a Knight
of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Pius XI, and included among his
associates and friends many influential scholars and officials of the
cosmopolitan world in which he lived. None of these, however, was
allowed to have any overall view of his activities, so that it is no easy
task today to give an adequate account of his life.

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Constantine E. McGuire Ph.D.

Constantine McGuire was born in Boston on 4 April 1890 and, like
many ambitious Boston-lrish, penetrated the precincts of Yankeedom
by attending the Boston Latin School and Harvard University. At both
places, he was a contemporary of Joseph P. Kennedy. McGuire took
three Harvard degrees: a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in
political science in 1911. a master’s degree in history the following
year, and a doctorate, also in history, in 1915. His chief interest lay
in the history of public law and institutions of the Middle Ages, so
that much of his study was with Charles Homer Haskins and Roscoe
Pound. With the latter he studied Roman law and comparative law.
In 1913-1914 he went to Europe on a Harvard Travelling Fellowship,
chiefly to Madrid and to Paris, where he studied law. He also attended
classes or courses at Leiden, Bonn, and Salamanca. In Paris he
attended the Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes, and began to
dream of seeing a similar institution in the United States.

On his return to Harvard in 1914, McGuire became an instructor in
history and wrote his doctoral dissertation on the history of immunities
from royal jurisdiction. He took his Ph.D. in 1915 and looked forward
to becoming a Harvard professor, but, in the course of that year,
it was made clear to him that, as he expressed it, “Harvard had
an unwritten rule which barred any Roman Catholic from teaching

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medieval history”.

Bitterly disappointed at this blow, from which he never really
recovered, McGuire left Harvard and gave up all aim of a teaching
career. He took a position as research assistant in the office of
the Secretary-General of the Inter-American High Commission in
Washington, and within a few months, was made Assistant Secretary-
General. At that time, the High Commission had much prestige, since
its ten members consisted of John Bassett Moore, Samuel Untermyer,
Paul M. Warburg, John H. Fahey, Duncan U. Fletcher, David F.
Houston as chairman, Guillermo A. Sherwell, Leo S. Rowe, and ex-
Mayor Andrew J. Peters of Boston. The Commission had twenty-nine
national sections, made up of experts and civil servants of the different
countries, each presided over by each nation’s Minister of Finance.
It was by these connections that McGuire established the contacts
through which he later exercised his influence and made his living.
Within a few years, in a manner which is unknown, he established
those contacts with the Vatican which he later transferred, to some
extent, to Father Walsh.

The High Commission worked to facilitate international economic
relations between states, seeking to stabilize monetary exchanges,
remove conflicts of laws, smooth all international transactions, and, if
possible, unify or coordinate regulations on business organizations,
including corporation laws and bankruptcy. In these efforts, McGuire
worked closely with the State Department, drafting international
agreements, and became the chief figure in these activities when
Leo Rowe, the Secretary-General of the High Commission, became
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 1917. It might be pointed out
that Rowe in 1919 became Chief of the Latin American Division
of the State Department for about a year and then, for twenty-six
years, until his tragic death in an automobile mishap in 1946, was
both Director-General of the Pan-American Union and, at McGuire’s
behest, Lecturer in Latin American History at the Foreign Service
School.

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McGuire left the High Commission in 1922 to join the staff of the
Brookings Institution as an economist. He stayed there seven years
during which he wrote numerous economic reports and collaborated
with Harold G. Moulton on a large volume, Germany’s Capacity to
Pay; A Study of the Reparations Problem(McGraw-Hill, 1923). In 1923
McGuire edited a study of American Catholicism entitled Catholic
Builders of the Nation (5 volumes, Continental Press, Boston, 1923).
He made numerous trips abroad and in 1928-29, lectured in Berlin
and Milan.

In 1929 McGuire resigned from Brookings and devoted full time to
his activities as a private economic consultant. He served for many
years as economic adviser to Venezuela and engaged in a similar role
with Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia, Nicaragua, and other countries,
as well as for private concerns and individuals.

As we have mentioned, McGuire was treasurer of the American
Historical Association in 1 930-36 and was president of the American
Catholic Historical Association in 1933. In World War II he acted as
civilian adviser to many high military and naval officers, including
Major-General George Strong, then head of U.S. Military Intelligence.

From his arrival in Washington in 1915 to his death, McGuire avoided
all publicity and covered his activities with a cloak of secrecy which is
almost impenetrable. He refused to appear in Who’s Who in America,
in the American Catholic Who’s Who, rejected offers of honorary
degrees and, it is believed, of foreign decorations. He did, however,
accept, in addition to his Papal title, the Venezuelan Order of the
Liberator, and a nomination as a trustee of Notre Dame University.
In 1922, when Father Walsh published a volume called The History
and Nature of International Relations, which consisted of public
lectures by ten outstanding authorities given in the auditorium of the
Smithsonian Institution in 1922-1921 (a series instigated and arranged
by McGuire), the book appeared with a dedication to McGuire. The
latter wrote at once to the University, acknowledged the compliment,
and expressed his regret that his name had appeared in public. Two

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years before, he had written to Father Walsh to insist that his name
be removed from the School catalogue. At that time the catalogue
also listed the names of an “Advisory Committee”; McGuire wrote to
Father Walsh in the same letter, “I also recommend that the phantom
‘committee’ be notified of its existence and then discharged.”

To the Georgetown community, McGuire’s chief interest must rest in
the very great role which he played in the founding of the School of
Foreign Service in 1919, the founding of the Institute of World Polity
in 1944, in Father Walsh’s whole career, and, more remotely, in the
establishment of the Institute of Languages and Linguistics in 1 949.
Much of this should be expressed in McGuire’s own words.

In a letter dared 29 April 1953 to Father William F. Maloney, S J.,
then Provincial of the Maryland Province, McGuire wrote, “The plan
for the school was drawn up by me in 1916-1917 and discussed by
me with Father Thomas I. Gasson, S.J. [then Dean of the Georgetown
University Graduate School] and Father John B. Creedon, SJ., [then
President of Georgetown University], Father Creedon could not see
his way clear to take it on. I then tried to interest Bishop Thomas J.
Shahan, of the Catholic University, who likewise felt it beyond his
resources. At this stage, one day in the summer of 1 91 8, 1 recounted
the story to Father Richard H. Tierney, S.J., on one of his visits to
Washington. ...He took the school plan with him that afternoon to
Georgetown. The next day he told me that Father Creedon would
receive me the following Sunday so as to discuss it once more. It was
then accepted in principle; and when the armistice came, the plan
was given effect. Father Walsh had reported back from the Student
Army Training Corps work and was assigned to take on this task....
Very few persons have any knowledge whatever that I had something
to do with the origin of the school; in fact, few persons, in or out of
the Society, are now living who know that I had. Probably Dr. J. de
S. Coutinho is the only man at Georgetown University other than
Father Walsh, who knows it....”

For about three years, 1919-1922, McGuire acted unofficially

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as executive secretary of the school. He assumed the task of
finding and hiring the faculty, obtained the first substantial financial
contribution ($20,000 from James A. Farrell, President of the U.S.
Steel Corporation), and made constant suggestions, often about very
minor matters, regarding the operation of the School. For example, he
sent Father Walsh numerous “memoranda” in which he suggested,
among other things, that monitors be appointed in each class to take
attendance and exclude unauthorized persons, that the language
classes were getting too large and should be divided into sections
of no more than thirty students, that specific numbers of text books
be ordered and that a designated number of these be placed on
reserve in the library, that some courses were larger than had been
anticipated and that, accordingly, assistants must be appointed
to correct papers and that the salaries of the teachers concerned
should also be increased. In addition, McGuire sent Father Walsh
drafts of public speeches, including that given by the Regent in the
Smithsonian on 14 January as one of the first series of public lectures
mentioned above.

In finding a faculty, McGuire showed an unusual talent for discovering
men of ability and scholarship, who were then almost unknown but
subsequently became famous. At that time McGuire was definitely
“persona grata” with the Russian Ambassador. Through him in 1919,
he discovered three recently arrived refugees: Michael I. Rostovtseff,
Michael Karpovich, and Baron Korff. All three were unknown at the
time in the United States, yet Rostovtseff, who became a professor
at Yale in 1925, was regarded as the greatest scholar in ancient
history working in the United States; Karpovich, who taught Russian
history at Harvard from 1927 to 1957 is still remembered with affection
and respect by all who knew him; Baron Korff unlike the other two,
accepted a teaching position at the Foreign Service School and stayed
there until his death. In a similar way, in 1 91 9, McGuire sent Sherwell
from the High Commission to be Professor of Spanish. At the same
time, he hired a 26-year old State Department official, Dana Gardner

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Monroe, to teach Latin American history. Monroe was with the State
Department until 1 932, when he went to Princeton as a professor of
history and became Director of Princeton’s Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs until 1 958. When he was transferred to Chile
in 1920, McGuire replaced him with his own former boss, Leo S.
Rowe, who taught at the School until his death twenty-four years later.
Others whom McGuire engaged in those early years were Ernest L.
Bogart, W. F Willoughby, James Brown Scott, John L. Latane, and
Stephen P. Duggan, all of whom were outstanding authorities in their
areas of competence.

Within two years (that is by 1921), McGuire was becoming
disillusioned with the School, partly because he hated all pretense
or any facade of publicity, but chiefly because he had, despite his
expertise, little grasp of the financial needs of such a school. Basically,
he did not want any undergraduate study or any strictly vocational
training, but wanted a high-level research institute concerned with
the broadest principles and the fundamental realities of international
affairs, to be used as a foundation for policy decision-making. What he
had in mind was much more like Chatham House (the Royal Institute
of International Affairs), or All Souls College at Oxford, or the American
copy of All Souls, the Institute For Advanced Study in Princeton.
The separation of McGuire from the School after 1923 rested on a
difference with Father Walsh on priorities: McGuire felt that expensive
projects could well begin before the necessary money was in hand (in
the faith that God, or perhaps McGuire himself, would provide); Father
Walsh, on the other hand, with a better grasp of household economia,
if not of international economics, could not commit the University to
expenditures before the money was available. Certainly he felt that no
grandiose projects could be undertaken without endowment, and that
until such funds were provided, the School had to have undergraduate
students to provide the tuition needed for survival. On this score the
Regent’s position seems to have been more realistic.

That McGuire’s dreams were grandiose is evident from his letter of

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1 953, already quoted; he said there: “What I had had in mind was the
intensive study of those factors which determine the course of foreign
policy, combined with special auxiliary training in languages. I had
myself attended the great Ecole Des Langues Orientales Vivantes
of the French Government in Paris before the war of 1914-1918, and
I knew that nowhere in the United States better than in Washington
could that admirable establishment be used as a model.... The
range of studies should be carefully focused on the policy-making
and long-ranged aspects of international relations.” Even in 1953
McGuire was still suggesting that the school be turned in that direction.
The elementary, undergraduate instruction should be left to other
institutions, especially to other Jesuit colleges, under Georgetown’s
guidance, with the advanced work provided at the School of Foreign
Service. He wrote:” The coordination of training in the elementary
courses might well have local variations to meet specific situations,
but it would mean the bringing into line all the work throughout the
country under authoritative and experienced guidance, and it would
furnish a substantial number of men suited for foreign trade and
related activities in their communities or elsewhere. The ‘switch board’
of all this would be in Washington at Georgetown ... In the field of
research itself, at Washington, seminars with but limited numbers
of men could turn out, in the course of a few years, an impressive
volume of performance of high average quality; and in less than one
generation, the Western Hemisphere’s most authoritative center of
the interpretation of the economico-social, psychological, and other
factors which affect the conduct of international policy would be
recognized as established at Georgetown.”

As a result of McGuire’s disillusionment with the development of the
School of Foreign Service as an undergraduate institution, he became
rather remote from it and from Father Walsh for almost twenty years,
1923-1943. But the Second World War re-affirmed his conviction of
the need, in a Catholic context, of a research institute concerned
with policy making. Accordingly, he persuaded Father Walsh, for

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whom he always had a deep personal respect, to establish, as an
appendage of the School, an Institute of World Polity to consist of
fifty highly qualified experts in various aspects of international affairs,
with a small paid staff of research workers. The latter were to carry
on research and prepare reports on such research (reports pointing
toward policy decisions) under the guidance of the fifty experts. Such
guidance as to be exercised by individual suggestions, by critiques
for revision of the preliminary reports, and by joint dinner discussions
of the problems involved. This plan and technique was very similar
to that practiced by the English Round Table Group (which had been
established by Lord Milner in 1 91 0, was financed by Rhodes Trust and
other moneys, and had founded the Royal Institute of International
Affairs in 1919), which played a very significant role in British foreign
policy in 1910-1940.

The Institute of World Polity as planned by McGuire was
established in 1944, with a Research Director named by him and a
membership of fifty almost all chosen by him. The Director was Dr.
Ernst H. Feilchenfeld, a recognized expert in McGuire’s own area
of international economic law and an extraordinary teacher. This
Institute still functions under the direction of Professor William V.
O’Brien. Typically, having set up the Institute, McGuire concerned
himself very little with its functioning and, in most cases, did not
even attend its plenary conferences. Equally typical was his remark
in 1953: “I thought its name gratuitously pretentious.”

To some extent McGuire’s neglect of the Institute of World Polity,
when he finally got it, resulted from his personal unhappiness at the
condition of the world; he looked with growing horror at the rise of
the authority of the state and the decline of religion, a combination
which, he felt, could lead to nothing but disaster.

Despite his alienation from the Foreign Service School after
1923, McGuire’s influence still continued to be exercised because
of the extraordinary effect he had on Father Walsh’s outlook and
associations. It seems likely that the links between Father Walsh and

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the Vatican outside the regular channels both of the Society of Jesus
and of the ecclesiastical hierarchy resulted from McGuire’s influence.
It probably was McGuire who suggested that Father Walsh lead the
Papal Relief Mission to Russia in 1922, an event which opened the
door to the Regent’s subsequent missions to Mexico, the Near East,
Germany and Japan. It is not, for example, generally known that
Father Walsh, when occasion arose, had direct access to the Pope,
and, by his private nocturnal conferences with Pius XI, roused the
ire of the then Papal Secretary of State.

Moreover, it is quite certain that it was McGuire who first directed
the Regent’s attention to the importance of Russia. In 1920, fifteen
months before the surprising appointment of Father Walsh to the
Russian mission, McGuire was urging on him the supreme importance
of establishing an integrated Institute or Department of Slavic studies
at Georgetown. On 5 November 1920, he wrote to Father Walsh
about this: “Five or ten years from now the demand for men who
know Russian well will relatively far exceed the demand for men who
know other languages; and those who are acquainted with Russian
life and the conditions under which it is carried on, with Russian
literature and history, will find themselves in very great demand. I
think the time is ripe to organize a distinct Slavic movement under the
aegis of the Foreign Service School (incidentally promoting the best
foreign policy of this government, demonstrating the foresight of the
school authorities, and taking the wind out of the sails of any mere
Pan-American Institution), which would aim to teach comprehensively
the language, ethnography, economics, social conditions, history,
and international position of Slavic peoples.” He suggested that
the program begin with a speech by the Russian ambassador and
consist at the beginning of a course on the history of Russia given
by Karpovich and a course on the economic conditions given by
Baron Korff. Once this is started it should be followed by a course on
Hungary and the Hungarian language given by Dr. McEachern of the
Catholic University. The passage ended with a rhetorical questions

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as to where the money for such projects is to come from. To this
McGuire answered, “I will guarantee (as a sort of moral obligation,
in the words of President Wilson, rather than a legal obligation), that
the money will be found for this Slavic division and for as many other
‘ethnic’ undertakings as you can set on foot.”

It seems very likely that these urgings and the call to Russia in
1922, had a good deal to do with the direction of Father Walsh’s
interests for the next fifteen or more years, until he became interested
in geopolitics at the end of the 1930’s. In this way, and through his
duties in managing the Foreign Service School, the Regent found his
life drastically modified by Constantine McGuire, even in the lengthy
period in which they met only infrequently.

Note: From McGuire’s secrecy the task of compiling a biographical
sketch such as this is very difficult and could hardly be achieved
without assistance from other persons. For much of what appears
above, I am indebted to the late Ernst Feilchenfeld. Most of the
documentary support for this came from the Georgetown University
archives, where I found Father Belwoar most helpful. Other information
was provided by the Papal Legation, by Dr. Neusse of The Catholic
Encyclopedia, by J. R. Trainor, former secretary of the School, by
Professor Sherbowitz-Wetzor, from the Cosmos Club, and from
others. I wish to thank all of these for their assistance.

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BETTER TRAINING FOR
FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICERS

An article by Carroll Quigley in The HOYA (November 16, 1967) pp. xx.

“Quigley Probes Possibilities for Foreign Service Curriculum Reform”

Congressional Quarterly Senate

Hon. Birch E. Bayh of Indiana
In The Senate of The United States
Wednesday, April 24, 1968

MR. BAYH. Mr. President, next October begins the 50th anniversary
year of the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. The
school is now in the process of revising its curriculum in the hope of
making it even more effective in preparing young men and women
for serving their country abroad. As the Nation’s oldest institution for
the training of personnel for careers in both diplomacy and trade,
the School of foreign service has produced in its half century an
impressive number of graduates.

Dr. Carroll Quigley, a professor of history at the School of Foreign
Service for 28 years, has written an informative and interesting
article about the changes now underway in this leading institution.
He argues persuasively that when the founder and regent of the
school, Rev. Dr. Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., revised the curriculum in
1951, shortly before his death, he envisioned a course of education
that would provide the student with a broad, interrelated background
in government, economics, history, languages, and philosophy. This,
rather than any specialized or narrow training, would best prepare
men to grapple with the problems of international relations and foreign
trade. Because of the significance of this development, not only to

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other colleges and universities but also to those who are intending
to prepare themselves for service abroad, I ask unanimous consent
that the article, which appeared in the November 16 issue of The
HOYA, be printed in the Record.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

QUIGLEY PROBES POSSIBILITIES FOR
FOREIGN SERVICE CURRICULUM REFORM

(By Carroll Quigley. Ph.D.)

Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.

Ends should determine means.

These two rules should be the guide posts to any reform of the
curriculum of the Foreign Service School, as to most other things.
That means that anyone talking or planning on this subject must be
aware of what the aim of the Foreign Service School is and of what
has been done in the past for achieving that aim.

In the last few years, there has been a fair amount of talk about
SFS curriculum reform, but most of it has been very badly informed
in respect to these two indispensable foundations. This article will
seek to sketch these as I have come to know them in my 26 years
in this School.

The goal of the SFS never was to prepare students for careers in
the Foreign Service of the United States, since the latter was not
established until the School was five years old. The similarity of
name is thus only coincidental. The School was established in 1919
in recognition of the fact that the United States had just become a
World Power with obligations in private as well as public areas. There
was a new need for trained personnel for many international agencies

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besides those of our own government. The fact that the League of
Nations was founded in the same year as the Foreign Service School
is much more significant than the fact that the Diplomatic Corps
and the Consular Service of the United States were combined into
a single agency called “the Foreign Service of the United States” in
1924, five years after the School was established. Moreover, it was
always expected that more graduates would go into private activities
overseas than would go to work for public agencies. For this reason,
the curriculum included study of accounting and commercial law as
required courses until fairly recently.

The wisdom of this early and persistent view of the goals of the
School will be evident to anyone who examines the areas in which
Foreign Service graduates have worked successfully. In the years
after World War II, when the largest classes were graduated, not
over 3 or 4% even took the State Department Foreign Service
examinations. On the other hand, many graduates went into a great
variety of overseas work, in airlines and shipping, in education and
journalism in foreign areas, as well as all kinds of overseas business.
For these positions they needed a broad and integrated preparation
in all aspects of international work.

In time this broad and integrated program came to provide one of
the best undergraduate programs in general social sciences available
in the United States, and it thus became, without anyone intending it,
one of the best preparations available for law school or for graduate
work in one of the social science specialties such as history, political
science, or economics. For graduate school the SFS curriculum was
better preparation than an undergraduate major in the same field,
either here or anywhere else, because it meant that a SFS alumnus
at graduate school in one of these fields had a solid grounding in
the other two, something which is absolutely essential, but is rarely
obtained from an ordinary undergraduate major, since most colleges
do not require this and many advise against it. Yet anyone who
examines what is done in graduate schools and by their graduates

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can see that a history major, for example, needs some knowledge
of both economics and government, just as concentrators in the
latter two fields need some knowledge of the other as well as of
history. Moreover, knowledge of these fields used to be obtained
in the SFS in an atmosphere where the emphasis was on teaching
and understanding these subjects, and on explaining their mutual
interrelationships in the actual experience of human life, and, above
all. on the understanding of this nexus as a basis for decision-making
in active life, and not taught, as they usually are in university-colleges
today, as preparation for specialized work, especially research, on
the graduate level. This last point is fundamental: it was at the basis
of the thinking of Constantine McGuire and Father Walsh when they
founded the School (Sec my article, “Constantine McGuire, Man of
Mystery,” in Courier, December 1965).

WARTIME EFFORTS

The curriculum of the SF’S was directed to these ends, as judged
best by Father Walsh and his advisers, from 1919 until the School
was mobilized for the war effort in June 1 943. During that time, there
were no departments and no faculty ranks (all the faculty were called
“lecturers” ). For much of that time, most of the faculty and many
of the students were part-time, and all courses were offered in the
evening, although by 1930, most courses were repeated in the day-
time. Each course was two credit hours, and a student often took
eight or more courses at a time. In time, as new courses were added,
the integration among them came to be less than desired. By 1940
or so, curriculum reform was very necessary, but the outbreak of war
put such demands on the School, and above all on Father Walsh,
that the task could not be tackled until 1950.

The SFS made a major effort in the war, turning almost entirely to
training of men in uniform in June 1943 and being swamped with
returning veterans as soon as the fighting stopped. In 1 947 the School

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had about 2300 students (more than twice its present enrollment). In
those first postwar years, Father Walsh was very busy with missions
to Germany and Japan, with writing two major books, and with the
establishment of the Institute of Languages and Linguistics. As a
result, the long needed reform of the Foreign Service curriculum was
not undertaken until the spring of 1950.

Perhaps because this task had been so long delayed, it was done
very thoroughly. Members of the faculty and administration met about
a dozen times, under the chairmanship of Father Walsh and with
Walter I. Giles as secretary, in Room 8 Healy, the “Constitution Room."
Most of these assemblies lasted several hours, some of them for a
good part of Saturday mornings. The whole group was divided up
into smaller committees which met elsewhere to work on parts of the
problem before reporting back to the plenary sessions. The general
ground rules were set by Father Walsh, after discussion with many
others.

REVISED CURRICULUM

These general rules were as follows: (1) The number of courses
taken at any one time must be reduced, and the courses themselves
strengthened so that they should leave the student with a real
familiarity with the subject concerned; (2) the courses should be
made more general, with the numerous specialized courses which
had grown up over the years either eliminated or made electives;
(3) a balance must be maintained between the various academic
disciplines so that a graduate would be familiar in some depth with
all the tools he might need in his post-graduate experience; and (4)
the School must ensure that these various disciplines and courses
are integrated in the students mind, and not simply memorized as
discrete academic subjects.

Two difficulties, from opposite directions, arose in the general
discussions. On one side, those who had been teaching specialized

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courses, such as “Staple Commodities in World Trade, ”or “Exporting
Practice,” or commercial law, accounting, and shipping, objected to
their subjects being reduced in time or made electives. On the other
hand, a group of the political scientists insisted that international
affairs was merely one part of the general subject of political science
and should be treated as such, with the main core of the curriculum
built on a political science department expanded to include additional
courses, especially a new course in “International Relations. "Father
Walsh was most emphatic in rejecting this last suggestion, insisting
that the whole program of study of the School was on International
Relations, and that this subject was not simply a matter of political
science but was equally concerned with economic, psychological,
intellectual, and other issues. He emphasized, against the efforts of
this group to cut down the time devoted to economics, that even in
the Foreign Service of the United States 80 percent of the time of
personnel on the lower levels was devoted to economic issues not
to political ones.

In this reform, most courses which were retained as required courses
were increased from two to three hours a week, and, at the same
time, the number of courses taken each year was reduced, with
freshmen and sophomores taking only five courses. Father Walsh
insisted that this adoption of the standard three-credit course must
not lead students to look at the achievement of the degree as simply
the accumulation of a number of discrete and separate courses. To
avoid this danger, it was decided to introduce an oral comprehensive
examination for all seniors to force them to review the work of the
first three years and to look at the assemblage of courses as a
single comprehensive body of knowledge. To assist in this end, each
professor was to prepare and submit for mimeograph publication a
syllabus of the content of his course so that all might know what was
in each course and how it fitted in with the others.

This curriculum reform of 1 950 took months of work and established
the outlines of the program still found at the School of Foreign Service.

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However, it has been so much subjected to tinkering and manipulation
that much of its original value has been lost. These changes arose
from two directions. On the one hand, new administrators who
knew nothing about the original reasons for the courses as they
were established made or allowed changes which weakened the
whole effect. On the other hand, the establishment of university-
wide departments, which did not exist in 1950, led to changes in the
content, sequence, and perspective of both faculty and courses so
that they fitted together less effectively for the SFS curriculum.

As set up in 1950, there were four years of history and political
science, three of economics, and two each of English, philosophy,
and language. The two years of required religion for Catholics were
non-credit courses. In the early 1950’s, the religion courses were
given credit to force students to take them more seriously. A few
years later, a new Regent could not see why Catholics had to take
12 credit hours more than non-Catholics to get the same degree,
so the latter were forced to take 12 hours more of history of political
theory as a substitute for religion. These 12 hours have since been
juggled in various ways. About the same time, a University official
felt that freshmen were not able to handle generalities, so used his
influence to have the SFS required freshman course in “Principles
of Political Science”abolished, with the result that most of them now
never get much of the material which was in that course.

The greatest changes in the curriculum, however, were not ones
which could be seen in the catalogue, but were simply the result
of the establishment of University-wide departments since 1950.
During Father Walsh’s regime, the SFS was a completely separate
entity whose only connection with the University was that it gave its
degrees under then University charter and rented room-space from
the University. It had a separate library, bank account, admissions
policy, administration, and faculty. In fact, about that time the College
issued a ruling that no one who taught in then> College could also
teach in the SFS. As a result of this order, William Flaherty, one of

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the greatest teachers in the history of the School, resigned from both
and left to become, in a short while, chief statistician of Chrysler
Corporation.

The creation of University departments meant that the course syllabi
were forgotten, the content of the courses changed even when names
remained the same, and the whole context of the School’s educational
process changed, with the substitution of departmental courses aiming
toward preparation for graduate work in that departmental discipline
replacing foreign service courses aiming at the establishment of
an integrated understanding of international affairs as an area of
decision-making and action. At the same time, the new University
faculty, possessed by the unique value of their own subject, or even of
their narrow specialty within that subject, were increasingly unable to
ask or to judge comprehensive questions on the oral comprehensive
examinations. In fact one of the amusing evidences of this process
has been the growing reluctance of the examiners to judge the
candidates in all three fields as the rules of the examination have
always required them to do.

CRUCIAL PROBLEMS

There is no need to explain in detail what has gone wrong with the
SPS curriculum in recent years. It should be sufficient to say that
many of the courses no longer contain what they should contain
or even what their titles would lead one to expect, because their
teachers are often off riding hobby-horses instead of teaching what
the SFS curriculum requires them to teach. Thus students often
have had no logic, even when their transcript lists a course called
“Logic, ’’their courses in English now often consist of impressionistic
studies of literature rather than the training in verbal communication
skills which the curriculum requires; they may well graduate with all
kinds of specialized knowledge in government, but are unable to

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define such basic concepts as “state, ’’“nationalism, ”or “democracy,”
in a similar way they often miss fundamental movements in the
historical past depending on which section they happened to be in
the required history courses; and, most astounding of all, they take a
degree in “Foreign Service ’’without ever having studied geography,
simply because the teacher of that subject refused to teach the
course described in the syllabus. And, finally as a culmination of all
these erosions of a once excellent program, the fitting together and
integration of the courses have become disjointed, the years of study
have become unbalanced (so that the freshman year is now too
easy and the sophomore year too difficult), and the better students
in the last few years are constantly being drained away from the SFS
curriculum to fill up special electives and proseminar courses so that
teachers whose primary interest is in some special subject on the
graduate level may have as sufficiently large group of good students
to make his efforts satisfactory to himself.

Additional Notes: This and a similar article by Prof Giles (put into
the record by another Senator) ignited the 1968-69 commotion that
resulted in the SFS getting budgetary autonomy a new Dean, and
its own faculty.

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IS GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
COMMITTING "SUICIDE"?

History Professor Relates School’s Difficulties To
Lack Of Direction, Loss Of Christian Foundations

by Carroll Quigley, Ph.D.

Professor of History
(The Hoya, Friday, April 28, 1967)

Long study of the history of many social organizations has convinced
me of one thing: When any such organization dies — be it family,
business, nation, religion, civilization, or university, the cause of death
is generally “suicide.” Or, if we must be more specific, “suicide by
self-deception.”

Like most truths, this one has nothing very new about it. The Hebrews
and the Greeks, who are our cultural parents, and our own western
civilization descended from these two, have always agreed that the
only sin, or at least the greatest sin, is pride, a particularly aggressive
type of self-deception. And anyone who is concerned with the health
of individuals knows well that neuroses and psychoses are basically
simply forms of self-deception, combined with an obstinate refusal
to face the facts of the situation.

This kind of illness is prevalent in all American higher education and
in all the sub-divisions of it, existing, indeed, in a more obsessive
and virulent form in the aspirant “Great Universities” than in the so-
called “Great Universities” themselves. It is to be found in its acute
form in Catholic education, in Jesuit education, and at Georgetown.

Of course, that is not what we are being told. Today, in education,
as in government and in everything else, the propagandists flood
us daily with rosy reports on how well things are going. Larger and

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larger expenditures of manpower, money and facilities (such as floor-
space) are devoted to telling the world about the wonderful job being
done in every organization worthy of the name from the Johnson
Administration down (or up) to Georgetown University. Fewer and
fewer people are convinced, or even listening, but in the process the
money and facilities (if not the manpower) which could have been
used on the goals of the organization are wasted on propaganda
about what a wonderful job is being done, when any sensible person
with half an eye can see that, every year, a poorer job is being done
in the midst of self-deceptive clouds of expensive propaganda.

But beneath these clouds, ominous cracklings can be heard, even
at Georgetown. If they come from within the University, they are
drowned out with another flood of words, denials, excited pointings
to a more hopeful, if remote, future, or by the creation of some new
organizational gimmick, a committee or a new “Assistant Something-
or-Other,”to deal with the problem.

If, on the other hand, these criticisms come from outside the
University, they are ignored or attributed to jealousy, sour grapes, or to
some other unflattering personal motivation of the critic. When these
criticisms come, as they often do, from some departing member of the
faculty, they are greeted by reflections on his personal competence or
emotional stability, both of which had been highly esteemed as long as
he remained here. As a result, most departing faculty, to avoid such
personal denigration, depart quietly, but they depart. Their reasons for
leaving are then attributed to the higher pay to be obtained elsewhere,
an explanation which fits in well with the Big Lie at GU, that all its
problems would be solved if the University only had more money.
Anyone who knows anything about the situation knows perfectly well
three things: that Georgetown’s problems would not be solved by
more money and have not been, but, on the contrary, have grown
steadily worse as the supply of money has increased; that resigning
faculty have been leaving because they were discontented; and that
the chief cause of that discontent has not been inadequate pay, but

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the generally chaotic and misguided Administration of the University.
In the last two years, the Mathematics and Classics Departments, as
well as the Law School, have seen their faculty depart in droves, but
the kind of administration from which they were fleeing continues,
even in the hands of different administrators.

The judgment on what is wrong at Georgetown should not rest on
verbiage from either defenders or denigrators; it can be based on
facts. No university which wastes as much money, time and effort
on non-educational matters as Georgetown does could possibly be
doing a good job in educational matters. And it is no defense to say
that every other university is doing the same. By non-educational
matters I mean such things as building, parking, food-service, public-
relations, planning, campus police, committees, paper-shuffling,
traveling by University officials, and constant verbalizing on non-
educational matters.

I’ll admit that things are just as bad, and may be worse, at other
universities. But this very fact makes it easier for Georgetown to
become a better university. All it has to do is decide what an education
is and do it, instead of driving hell-bent, as it now is, to become exactly
like all other universities of the country. For those other universities are
going, at high speed, in the wrong direction, as must be clear to any
observer who has any idea what education should he and compares
that idea with what is actually going on. Or, even if the observer has
no idea what education should be, he can grasp, merely by looking
and listening, that education is not healthy anywhere.

A few months ago, Newsweek asked, “Why is there no first-rate
university in the nation’s capital?” This assay created a minor ripple
locally but did not divert the rulers of Georgetown an iota from
their mad rush in the wrong directions. Their chief reaction to the
Newsweek question was resentment. But any honest and observant
person examining the local scene in higher education could have
only one reaction: surprise that anyone should be either surprised or
resentful at Newsweek s article. Ajudicious assessment by anyone

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who has any regard for real education would conclude that Newsweek
had been too kind to us, for Georgetown, the best of the five local
universities, is third-rate and deteriorating, and it does not help to see
that our neighbor, the George Washington University, is fourth-rate
and is deteriorating even more rapidly. What does hurt is to realize
that Georgetown has, for years, had a golden opportunity, such as
GW never could have, to make a great contribution to American
education, but has, again and again, muffed that opportunity because
of the increasingly frantic pursuit of strange, alien gods by the rulers
of Georgetown.

CONANT-DODDS INFLUENCE

Georgetown has had this opportunity for one simply stated but
complexly true reason: because it was Catholic. But, instead of being
Catholic, or even Jesuit, Georgetown has rudely turned its back on
its one chance of making any contribution to American education
and has instead almost totally destroyed its opportunity for becoming
an excellent Catholic university and a good American university, in
its frantic drive to become a fifth-rate Harvard. Those who vaguely
feel this error, including the rulers of the University itself, correctly
attribute it to “lack of leadership” on the part of those rulers. But
again, in another rejection of their own traditions — the traditions
of the Christian West — they neglect to define what they mean by
leadership and, at the back of their minds, use a purely operational
definition, that educational leadership is what poor misguided men
like James Conant and Harold Dodds have done, or advocate doing.
Any observer who has even a glimmering of an idea what education
and leadership really imply and, in addition, knows what Conant and
Dodds did to Harvard and Princeton, can only hope that Georgetown
can be spared the Conant-Dodds influence and, instead, finds the way
to real education and real leadership by getting back to our Christian
heritage (not as indoctrination but as a technique for responsible

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cooperative activity in terms of real goals with real values).

The rulers of Georgetown University have never stopped to ask
themselves: What is real education? What should we be trying to
do? What can we do best, or better than anyone else around? What
can our own traditions contribute to the improvement of American
education? From the answers to these questions Georgetown could
achieve the best undergraduate education in America and do it
with less money than is now being wasted on the misguided, mis-
emphasized, present drive to follow the so-called “great universities”
down the slope after Harvard, Princeton, and Berkeley.

Georgetown cannot copy these institutions, even if they have been
on the correct road (which they have not), because they are rich
and G. U. will never be rich. A rich university, like Harvard with an
endowment of over a billion dollars, can, perhaps, afford to make
mistakes, and can, perhaps, afford to indulge in thatfaddism which is
the chief bane of education in America, but G.U. cannot afford these
things. Moreover, the effort to copy Harvard or Princeton is bound to
fail when the men who make the decisions at G.U. do not really know
what happened, or is happening, at Harvard or Princeton. They do
not know that the innovations in education which began at Harvard
and Princeton like the free elective system, the “case method”, the
tutorial and preceptorial systems, narrowly specialized departments
with overly specialized undergraduate training, the College Board
system of admissions, “General Education,” “Advanced Standing,”
and many other innovations have contributed little to the improvement
of American education and are coming to be recognized increasingly
as expensive and temporary fads. But they have swept the country,
except for those things like tutorial instruction or residential colleges
which have proved too expensive to be copied by most universities.

Twenty years ago, in recognition of the injury being inflicted on
undergraduate education by over-specialization, Harvard spent about
$46,000 on a faculty committee which came up with the famous
“Harvard Report on General Education. ”On the basis of that report,

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courses were set up at Harvard on “general education. ’’Today, the
undergraduate can take his choice from 94 courses in “General
Education,” the most recent of which is on computer programming.
This is the kind of educational nonsense which goes on when an
American university has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend.
And this is the kind of nonsense which a growing Georgetown
budget is bringing to G.U. This kind of nonsense will spread and
continue to spread as long as there is money available to finance
it and as long as university decision-makers refuse to define what
they mean by education in analytical terms and continue instead to
emphasize activity over thought and accept, without questioning, a
purely operational definition which believes that “education is what
goes on in universities especially at Harvard. ’’Such a definition may
be fine for administrative careerists, but it is death to real education,
although the university administrators will not recognize their demise
until students, rather than faculty, depart in droves from universities,
a movement which will come when students decide that they want a
real education rather than a diploma and will reconcile themselves to
the fact that lack of a diploma may exclude them from entrance into
the great bureaucratic structures of business, government, education
and the professions, but will not prevent them from living a better life
than is possible in such bureaucratic structures.

THE CHRISTIAN WEST

Education, correctly defined, means training toward growth and
maturity to prepare a person to deal, in a flexible and successful
way, with the problems of life and of eternity. It does not mean, as
it increasingly is taken to mean by the educational operationalists
who now control our educational bureaucracy, obtaining a ticket of
admission to some other bureaucratic structure, however large and
rich that may be.

Education in operational terms has no meaning (as all operational

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definitions have no meaning) because it has no reference outside itself,
and all meaning must be based on reference to something outside
the object being defined. Until recent centuries, meaning was defined
in terms of purpose and goals, but, as teleology fell into disrepute,
meaning came to mean context as a whole (a belief which has always
been held in most Asiatic countries). Today, over-specialization and
the great speed of change have destroyed, or almost destroyed,
the context of everything, and we are reduced to purely operational
definitions and meanings. But, since all operational definitions are
solipsist, and everything in the world today has become isolated and
subjective, any meaning in either teleological or contextual or even
functional terms has become impossible and we are faced with the
total triumph of the Meaningless and The Absurd. American education
has followed this process and is now speeding toward ruination of
all education in terms of individual maturity and ability to cope with
any whole human experience or meaning.

We might ask: Why is it necessary for Catholic education or for
Jesuit education to follow that road to ruin? The reason they do so
is clear enough. For more than a century, from 1830 to after 1940,
Catholics in America lived in a ghetto. When American Catholics
decided to leave their ghetto (right after the Jews and just before
the Italians and Negroes), they did what any people fleeing a ghetto
do: they uncritically embraced the outside world, without seeing that
that world was moving rapidly toward increased chaos, corruption
and absurdity. They abandoned completely a basic principle of the
Christian West: that salvation is to be found, either for the individual or
for the community, only in slow growth in terms of one’s own traditions
and background. If Catholic education had been willing to do that, it
could have made a great contribution to American education and to
American life, because the only thing which can save America or our
world is to get back to the abandoned traditions of the Christian West
and to resume the process of growth and development of our society
on the basis of those traditions. By aping the un-Christianized, de-

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Westernized world of American life and American education outside
the old Catholic ghetto, the Jesuits have betrayed Christianity, and
the West, to a degree even greater than has occurred at Harvard or
at Princeton. And now young people all over the country are trying
desperately to get back to some kind of real, if primitive, Christianity,
with little real guidance from their so-called teachers and clergy. What
is even more ironical is that they, and the more progressive of their
teachers, in their efforts to get back to the mainstream of Western
Christian growth are trying to work out, by painful application, all
those things (like multi-valued logic, or the role of daily good-works
in Christian life) which were worked out within the Christian West
long ago, but are now forgotten, and now have to be re-discovered
as something new.

If Catholic education, and especially Jesuit education at G.U., had
reformed itself in the true sense, by getting back to its own traditions
and growing from that base, great contributions could have been
made to an American educational system and an American life which
are thirsting for them but falsely believe that they can be found only
by blundering forward into an unexplored future (as in existentialist
philosophy or in the contemporary flood of writings on theology) or
by copying the age-old errors of Asia.

CATHOLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Moreover, on the basis of the Catholic Christian tradition of the
West, enormous opportunities are offered for research and writing.
The secular world’s versions of economic theory or of the history of
political theory, are biased, naive and mistaken. Many of their errors
rest directly on their rejection of the Christian tradition. In my own
field of history, the versions of the middle ages, of the renaissance,
of the rise of science, of economic and constitutional history are still
based on the anti-Catholic biases of the nineteenth century. The
history of ideas in Western civilization cannot be understood by

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anyone who is not familiar with Western religion, and the Catholic
version of it, from the inside. Yet all the widely read “authorities” on
this subject are non-Catholic, generally non-Christian, and often anti-
Catholic. As a result, they cannot understand what has happened
or even organize the subject (except on a biographical basis). The
history of these subjects has been distorted for years by anti-Catholic
bias, but the task of straightening out these errors has been left to
places like Harvard, instead of being done, as could have been more
easily done, by Catholic campuses. Fifty years ago, the Protestant
version of the rise of modern science as a reaction against medieval
obscurantism was being corrected by a remarkable group of Catholic
historians of science like Duhem and Tannery. Their work was never
finished, because it was abandoned by Catholic scholars, until it had
to be taken up by non-Catholics like Marshal Clagett, who had been
trained at Harvard by George Sarton. The whole Whig interpretation
of British history has to be re-written along lines which were sketched
out, in a very unscholarly way, by Catholics like Christopher Hollis.
But instead of doing these urgent tasks, Catholic universities are
trying to adopt the kind of pedantic, secularized micro-research of
the prevailing “great universities” and will leave these great tasks
undone, until someone there, rather than here, does it, and has to do
it, in all probability, by an almost superhuman effort of re-discovering,
on his own, the necessary Christian Catholic tradition which will
have vanished completely from the Catholic universities under the
stresses of their efforts to become secularized fifth-rate Harvards.
What a great lost opportunity! And what a pity!

Much of the process of deterioration of the West lies in the
fragmentation and excessive specialization of life and of education.
In the latter, this was reflected in the division of universities into
exclusive departments, of departments into courses, of courses into
preparation for successive examinations, the whole reflected in a
purely arithmetic accumulation of credit hours (at so many dollars
per credit hour), which mechanically entitle the student to a degree

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when some designated total is reached. It should be noted that this
monstrous and destructive violation of all real educational process
was never fully accepted at Harvard or Princeton, although it is now
solidly entrenched at Jesuit universities.

Another example of the fragmentation process can be seen in the
way in which the purely operational idea of education has blurred and
destroyed the successive levels of the educational process. Today the
activities of graduate schools have come to dominate and destroy the
work of colleges, the work of colleges has come to distort and destroy
the work of secondary schools, and the secondary schools have
come to eclipse and eliminate the tasks of the elementary schools.
As a result, each level is trying to do the work of the next higher level
and refusing to do the work of its own level, all educational emphasis
is on “advanced” preparation, “advanced standing, ’’and “advanced
placement”, and students are everywhere being taught to fly before
they can walk or even crawl. Today, first and second grade teachers
are too concerned with how to shift a number system from base 10
to base 2 to find time to teach reading; high school teachers are so
involved in the historiographical problems of the American Civil War
that they never find time to train students in how to analyze or to
outline, while, on the same level, biology students are so involved
in the problems of the genetic code and molecular biology that they
never learn the basic hygiene and physiology of their own bodies. And
on the college level, all the emphasis is on seminars and research to
the detriment of any training in understanding the world, or even in
getting acquainted with the subject. Naturally, nowhere along the line
does anyone find time to train students to read, to digest, to organize,
to think, to correlate, with the result that every educational institution
at all levels must now surround itself with remedial, counseling, and
psychotherapeutic offices to do what the whole educational system
should have done years before but which they all resolutely refused
to do because they insisted on doing, not their own jobs, but the job
of the next higher level of the educational system. One of the latest

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examples of this fad is Cornell’s acceptance of “qualified”freshmen
for their new 6-year Ph.D. program.

As a consequence of this process, it is today impossible for a decent
undergraduate college to exist on the same campus as a burgeoning
graduate school. This was the reason behind the student revolt at
Berkeley; it was a revolt of undergraduates at the shabby treatment,
neglect and exploitation they get from the fact that the undergraduate
college there is drowning in that morass of undergraduate irrelevancies
summed up in Clark Kerr’s idea that the Berkeley campus was a
“multiversity.” But, of course, like everything today, this simple truth
was buried in mountains of irrelevancies in all the discussions about
the Berkeley fiasco, a consequence which is inevitable when Berkeley,
and all the other American universities, are pouring out graduates who
are untrained in either analysis or critical thinking, but instead have
been trained in a narrow specialization whose verbiage is irrelevant
outside its own field, except to the degree that it has diffused to other
specialists as cliches and slogans.

A DIFFERENCE OF GOALS

The reasons that a graduate school eclipses and strangles an
undergraduate college are two: (1) because the faculty come to
be chosen for what are regarded as qualifications for graduate
instruction, instead of for the quite different qualifications needed for
undergraduate teaching; and (2) the difference between the aims of
the two levels become confused, so that undergraduate aims become
submerged and lost and are replaced by departmental emphasis, in
its own undergraduate teaching, on preparation for graduate school,
despite the fact that only a minority, or even a very few, of its students
are ever going to graduate school in that subject.

The consequences of this double process are fully evident in the
recent history of many undergraduate institutions and perhaps
most clearly in the School of Foreign Service. Twenty years ago

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the School of Foreign Service was completely autonomous; there
were no departments, and there was no faculty rank and tenure.
The faculty were concerned with teaching, and the courses were
supposed to prepare graduates to understand international problems
and to operate in the field of such problems. Neither the faculty nor
the courses were aimed at preparing students for graduate schools.
But, surprisingly, the School was, in fact, outstandingly good in
preparing for work on the graduate level in any of the social science
departments, such as history, economics, or political science, and
was, indeed, perhaps the best preparation available for going to law
school (this despite the fact that Father Walsh tried to exclude from
the School all students who intended to go to law school). And, at
the same time, the SFS did an excellent job preparing people for
international work.

For years, I asked all returning alumni of the Foreign Service School if
they were, on the basis of their post-graduation experiences, satisfied
with their undergraduate education at the SFS. The overwhelming
majority were very satisfied. Many said something to this effect: “In
the years since I graduated from the School of Foreign Service, I
have been in direct contact, and often in competition with, outstanding
graduates from Harvard, Princeton, or other big name universities,
and have consistently had the feeling that I had a better grasp of the
problems we were dealing with than they did.”

TRAHISON DES CLERCS

The reasons for this last statement have always seemed clear to
me. Our students were trained to understand, and trained on a non-
specialized basis, which included philosophy, religion, languages,
and all three of the basic social sciences, while the Ivy League
graduates, as often as not, had been trained on a far more specialized
basis and trained as preparation for “research,” not for dealing with
foreign problems as ecological wholes. In fact, the need for the latter,

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which is increasingly recognized in foreign problems, in economic
development, in adaptation of political institutions, or in community
development, had to come into overspecialized departments of
political science and economics from other disciplines which use
such an ecological approach, such as undergraduate anthropology,
non-experimental psychology and biological ecology.

Over the past twenty years, as Georgetown has tried to become
“a Great University” (meaning a fifth-rate Harvard), University-wide
departments have been established, the faculty for these departments
have been recruited on quite a different basis, and the courses have
been subtly changed from explanations of the subject to preparation
for graduate work in that subject.

The most obvious change has been in standards of faculty
recruitment — or, as it is miscalled everywhere, “raising faculty
standards.” Undergraduates should be taught by men who have a
broad understanding of the subject, who are themselves of broadly
cultured background and who are, above all, good teachers.
They should be men who understand students, the world, and the
relationship of their subject to both of these, and they should be men
who seek to impart understanding and do not confuse understanding
with either knowledge or pedantry.

No “Great University” uses, or will use, standards such as these in
hiring faculty. Instead, every aspirant “Great University” emphasizes
earned degrees, the place where these were earned, research
reputation, and the number of publications (regardless if these
works are ever read by anyone). The disastrous consequence of
faculty chosen and promoted on this basis on the aims and quality of
undergraduate education must be obvious, especially in combination
with the previously mentioned shift in course content from explanation
and understanding of the subject to preparation for graduate work
in that subject.

When these changes take place in a university in which other
changes (already mentioned) are taking place, such as the passing

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of university control into the hands of careerist administrators and
the loss of all conception of the meaning and value of education by
university decision-makers who adopt purely operational ideas of
educational purpose and educational activities, it is clear that the
aspirant “Great University” rapidly becomes an educational sewer.

Real education requires a teleological or contextual (biological)
understanding of educational purpose and meaning. It requires,
beyond that, only three things: books, students, and faculty — in that
order, with the faculty less significant than good books and motivated
students. In fact, a motivated student today can get a better real
education (but no diploma) in any large urban public library than he
can from the harassed and disconcerted faculty of the most highly
touted multiversity.

Moreover, no solution of the present crisis of our society, of the
personal problems and quandaries of the individual members of our
society, nor of our multifarious educational problems, is possible or
conceivable unless it is firmly rooted in our Western Christian heritage.
This does not mean going back to anything we had before, but it does
mean going back to our roots in the past, and growing onward from
those roots, which must be found in a period in our past before the
alien gods of material affluence, of power-thirsting, of sex-obsession,
of egotism and existential self-indulgence, became the chief aims
of life, eagerly embraced, as they now are, by our contemporary
“trahison des clercs”.

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OBSOLETE ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

The HOYA(1967 or 68)
by Carroll Quigley, Ph.D. Professor of History

No education is worth much which does not help those who receive
it to understand the world in which they live and to feel more at home
and more confident in the world. For many years, the experience of
Americans in their academic institutions has not been helping, but
rather has hindered, that process. That experience has tended to be a
kind of brainwashing, seeking, in most cases, to establish a bourgeois
or (in recent years) a petty bourgeois outlook. On the higher levels of
the system, this has been supplemented by a steadily narrowing of
training for a place in the bureaucratic structures which now dominate
American life, in business, in government, in education itself, in
religion, t he law, medicine, and the defense forces. This is reflected
in earlier, and in more and more narrow, specialization and i n the
increasing pedantic nature of so much of the work done in all fields.

On one side, this leaves so-called educated people incapable
of understanding the rapidly changing society in which w e live
and, as the opposite side of the same situation, leaves us facing
gigantic problems to whose understanding and solution the existing
educational structure has little to contribute (that is why they became
gigantic). This can be seen most clearly by asking ourselves the
simple question: “In which of our academic disciplines do these
problems fall?” Or more concretely, “From which of the existing
academic disciplines would we recruit someone to enlighten us on
each of these problems?”However we word these questions, there is
no answer, for the simple reason that the great problems of our day
do not fall into any one academic discipline, and, indeed, cannot be
dealt with by committees made up of persons from different academic
specialties.

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TODAY'S PROBLEMS

The problems are obvious:
war and peace;

1. urban problems;

2. environmental pollution and destruction of our natural basis
for living;

3. the rising tide of mental ill-health, emotional instability, and
personality disorders;

4. racial problems;

5. growing social disintegration and violence;

6. the problems of under-developed countries.

Not one of these falls into one of the academic departments into
which our educational establishment is divided. These disciplines
were separated toward the end or the Nineteenth Century, when it
was possible to believe that politics was separated from economics,
and that neither of these was closely related to psychology, literature,
history, technology, mathematics, or the natural sciences. But today
anyone who does not recognize that all of these are closely inter-
related and that all of them are intermingled in all the major problems
facing us is disqualified, by that belief, from having any authority in
any of them. None of these problems which we must solve if we are
not to perish falls cleanly, or even mainly, into any existing academic
discipline. That is precisely why we are so helpless in dealing with
them.

ON THE BORDERS

Take the last of the problems listed above, that of the underdeveloped
areas. On this we have spent untold billions of dollars in the last
20 years, with almost no constructive results. We were told it was
an economic problem, capable of solution with technical training

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and inflows of capital. We poured money into backward countries,
corrupting them, and making millions of native peoples discontented,
only to discover that the real obstacles were in the minds of those
peoples, in the way they looked at human experience, and in their
value systems, which were largely incomprehensible to us. The only
real help we got from the academic community, and that chiefly as an
explanation of why we were failing, came from anthropology, which
did have a glimmering of the truth because it was almost the only
academic field which tried to study societies different from ourselves
as functioning wholes.

Today, even in the natural sciences, the only real advances are being
made, not within subjects, but on the borders of the older academic
fields where subjects are mixed (as in space). The only great scientific
discovery since the war, molecular biology, is of this type.

Today no great advances can be made, nor can the problems
facing us be understood, by anyone who stays within the borders
of one of the present academic disciplines. In each, the workers
are smothered in overspecialization and pedantry. Yet in each the
majority of members are very busy congratulating each other on
the wonderful work they are all doing. That is self-deception, for the
regular academic disciplines are now bankrupt, incapable of providing
their explanations or solutions to problems.

The chief group of discontented are, of course, the students, who
grow increasingly restless, discontented, and alienated because of
their recognition of the large-scale irrelevance of so much of what
they have to learn. Within these fields, some teachers realize, more
or less unconsciously, that much is wrong. Yet they feel that they
must go on, and do so, rationalizing that they have to make a living
somehow, and this is the only way they are equipped to earn what
is needed, and, secondly they assure themselves and their students
that the latter must have a college education. This latter belief is
correct only if the student is determined to make his living by finding
a place in the great and ever-growing bureaucracies which envelop

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our world and now overshadow it. But all of these bureaucracies do
their work inefficiently and badly. They look good only if we accept
their own fraudulent bookkeeping. If a student wants to spend his life
en-capsulated in the interstices of one of these monstrous structures,
I suppose he does need a college education, not because college
prepares him to do their work but simply because these structures
increasingly demand a college degree as a ticket of admission to their
employ. They demand that only because it indicates that the, holder
of that ticket has submitted to years of brainwashing in irrelevancies
and will put up with the myths of the bureaucracy he joins.

SELF-EDUCATION

If a young man today simply wants to make a very good living
associated with freedom and variety, he can do it much better
without a college education. Of course he must be educated, but
real education today can he obtained much m ore easily (although
it is never easy) in constant attendance at a good public library than
at the so-called “best” universities (which are frequently the worst
ones). Today, as almost never before, the way lies open to any
enterprising young man to find something to do which is now being
done badly or not done at all by our bureaucratized society. To do
this the first task of the young man must be to dismiss as the myth it
is what passes for truth in existing universities. There is a truth and
it can be found; it has been found, to some degree, by men in the
past, and by men in other societies. The task of finding it is lifelong,
and probably continues after bodily death, and the greatest joy of
living is the search for it. That is why we are here, but to find it in the
accepted wisdom of the existing academic structure is to put oneself
in an intellectual prison, which does not help.

Of course, if someone can go to college and not become a prisoner
of its myths and can continue free from the bureaucratic structure
toward which the average college seeks to direct students, he can

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also live a good life and, like a non-college man, get rewards greater,
even in material things, than the average college-bureaucracy-tied
person. And in addition, like Ralph Nader, he will be able to keep his
freedom and self-respect, which is worth something.

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NEEDED: A REVOLUTION IN THINKING

An article by Carroll Quigley in Today’s Education,
March-April 1975, originally published in the
National Education Association Journal 57 (May 1968), pp. 8-10:

SPECIAL SECTION ON THINKING AND LEARNING

By Carroll Quigley Professor of History, Georgetown University,
Washington, DC. (Originally published in 1968)

Every event, every human experience, is unique. It occurs at a
certain place, at a certain moment, to persons at a specific age and
condition and in an arrangement of all these which will never be
repeated. Never again will that event happen at that place, at that
time, to those people, under those conditions.

People can deal with such unique events by action. The baseball
player at the plate faces that unique and never-to-be repeated pitch
and by making a never-to-be-repeated swing at it may be able to hit
the ball over the fence for a home run. This is an example of how
individuals, by action, can deal successfully with the unique events
that make up the living experience of humankind.

But people also try to deal with the continuous stream of unique
events which make up their lives by other methods besides action.
They try to think about them and to communicate with others about
them. To do this, they classify unique events into general classes
or categories and they attach names or labels to such categories.

This process of classification and labeling ignores the qualities which
make events unique and considers only those qualities which events
are believed to share or to have in common. In this process, each
society (and each person in that society) classifies its experiences
and events into categories and then gives labels to these categories

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and puts a relative value on them — regarding some of them as good
or desirable and others as less good and less desirable.

Each society has such a system of categories and of valuations of
categories. This is known as the society’s “cognitive system. ” It is the
most important thing we can know about any society and the most
difficult to learn. When individuals speak of the “inscrutable Chinese”
or the “mysterious East, "they are really saying these remote peoples
have cognitive systems that are different from theirs and are therefore
more or less incomprehensible to them.

Getting to know the cognitive system of any people (or even of
other persons in our own society, since no two persons have exactly
the same cognitive system) is difficult because it is not easy even to
take the first step to recognize that we ourselves have a cognitive
system, a distinctive way of looking at the world that is not the way
the world actually is but is simply the way our group conventionally
looks at our world.

The best way to recognize that one’s own group has a distinctive
way of looking at things and that our own way is not the way things
necessarily are is to deal with groups who have cognitive systems
different from ours and who are just as certain that their way of seeing
things is the way things actually are.

Such an experience, called “cultural shock, "may lead to cognitive
sophistication — the recognition that all cognitive systems are
subjective; that each is misleading to those who have it; and that
although each enables those who have it to function within their
own group, it handicaps them in dealing with persons from other
groups. Moreover, even within a single society or group, cognitive
sophistication is necessary whenever the experiences of that society
are changing so rapidly that the old ways of looking at actuality
handicap rather than help in dealing with the society’s problems.

When people or groups with different cognitive systems interact,
frictions and clashes occur, in many cases, without anyone’s being
able to see why. This happens even where there may be a maximum

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of goodwill on both sides. The difficulty occurs because individuals
are unaware that they have a cognitive system of their own and, while
seeing fully what other people do that irritates them, they cannot see
why anything they are doing should irritate anyone else.

Cognitive sophistication makes it possible to know both one’s own
cognitive system and that of the different group with which one works
so that one may be able to translate both talk and actions from one
such system into the other, while recognizing the conventional and
arbitrary nature of both.

Cognitive sophistication is so rare and so difficult to acquire that
interaction across cultural barriers is a frequent cause of conflict.
This applies to all relationships across cultural barriers — not only to
those with other nations and major cultures but also to those within
a culture, such as relationships between suburbanites and slum
dwellers or between races or social classes.

The cause of such cognitive conflicts may arise in large part from
the different ways in which peoples look at time. Time is undivided
duration, but in order to think or talk about it, each culture must
divide it.

Our culture divides time into two parts, the past and the future,
which meet at the present moment — an instant without duration.
This is reflected in European languages, which have tenses in the
past, present, and future. But some peoples, such as the Bantu of
Africa, do not have time classes of this sort in their language or social
outlook. Many Bantu tongues divide verbs into those concerned with
completed and uncompleted actions. They have no future tense
because they categorize the future and the present together into a
single form concerned with unfinished actions. (Similarly, in English
we sometimes say, “I am going to school tomorrow, "using the present
tense for a future action.)

In the usual Bantu cognitive system, time is quite different from
what it is to middle-class Americans, since it consists of a present of
long duration and great importance; a past of less importance and

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moderate duration, such as can be held in personal memory; and
almost no future distinguishable from the present.

Among some of these people, the future is not conceivable beyond
the next few days and certainly has no meaning in terms of years.
These people live in and value the present with all its problems,
pleasures, and human relationships. Such people, even if they are
given birth-control devices, are unlikely to use them, simply because
they have no training in subjecting present relations to a hypothetical
event nine months in the future.

Such cognitive differences are of great significance, especially when
value systems are different. The African values the present, whereas
many middle-class Americans put all emphasis on the importance of
the future and are ready to make almost any sacrifice in the present
for the sake of some hypothetical future benefit. In contrast to both,
the aristocrat of today, like the ancient Greek, usually puts highest
valuation on the past.

In our society, the latter viewpoint is now generally ignored, but the
conflict between the “future preference”of the American middle-class
suburbanite and the “present preference” of the lower-class slum
dweller leads the former to regard the latter as shiftless, irresponsible,
and lacking in self-discipline, while slum dwellers may regard the
suburbanites’ constant present sacrifice for future benefit as making
them dehumanized and inhibited. In my opinion, the collapse, over
the past two decades, of middle-class efforts to export our “self-
enterprise” economic system to “underdeveloped countries” or to
abolish ignorance and poverty in our own cities has been caused
primarily by the existence of cognitive barriers — specially the one
associated with time.

But there is much more to the problem than this. People can deal with
their experiences consciously only if they have a cognitive system.
This is why individuals cannot remember the events of the first year or
two of their own lives, before they had acquired a cognitive system by
learning to talk and rationalize. The events of that period of “infantile

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amnesia” are incorporated in people’s neurological and metabolic
systems, as can be shown by getting individuals to relive an early
experience under hypnosis, but they cannot consciously recall and
verbalize the experience until they have categorized it, something
they could not do when it occurred.

The cognitive system of any people is of major importance because
it includes all those unconscious classifications, judgments, and
values which trigger most of an adult’s initial responses to events.
Every culture, including our own, has a cognitive system at its very
foundation, and this is what really keeps it functioning, because it
enables large numbers of people to live in the same society without
constant clashes and conflicts. Afew examples will serve to show this.

We divide the whole range of colors, as found in the rainbow, into
six colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. With our European
background, we think a view is beautiful if it consists of alternating
horizontal bands of green and blue, as in a landscape consisting of a
foreground strip of green shore, a blue lake beyond, a farther shore
of green trees and hills, and a blue sky beyond that.

But to a Bantu of dry Africa, such a view is a rather boring panorama
of a single color, for many natives of that language group place
green and blue in a single category with one name, although they
divide the lower red-orange-yellow portion of the spectrum into a
larger number of basic colors with different names. That is why what
impresses us as a beautiful view of shore, lake, and sky strikes them
as a rather monotonous field of one color, whereas, conversely, an
African landscape, which to us seems to be a dull expanse of semi-
parched soil with dry grasses, may seem to them to be an exciting
scene of many different colors.

(As Americans of European background have become familiar
with the African-like views of Arizona and New Mexico, many have
come to feel that these semi-desert views are preferable to the
more “conventional beauties” of New England, Wisconsin, or upper
Michigan. And the Navaho or other natives of our Southwest show

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their preference for the red-orange-yellow portion of the spectrum
by their extensive use of these colors and their scanty use of green,
blue, or violet in their arts.)

A somewhat similar example exists in respect to distinguishing
and naming the various states of H 2 0. In our culture, we divide that
range into no more than five or six categories, such as ice, snow,
slush, water, and steam. But some Eskimo groups who are vitally
concerned with how a dogsled moves on snow divide snow alone into
50 or more different categories, each with a distinct name. Today, in
our own culture, as the sport of skiing grows more popular, we are
developing numerous names for snow conditions on ski slopes to
describe different skiing conditions.

Another significant example of any culture’s cognitive view of
experience may be seen in the way it divides the life span, especially
the preference it places on these divisions.

Many native societies of Africa, for example, are formally divided
into six or seven rigid stages, and the transitions from one to another
are marked by formal, often painful, “crisis ceremonies. ’’Frequently,
there is little contact between different age classes. Thus, youths of
seven to 11 years may live together in bands with almost no contact
with parents, while the age group 18 to 28 may be almost totally
devoted to war or hunting and forbidden to marry until they move,
as a group, into the next age range, say from 28 to 45.

By contrast, in the medieval period, Christian Europe divided a
person’s life into only two stages, childhood and adulthood, separated
at about age seven by First Communion. There was a slight tendency,
arising from the Jewish Bar Mitzvah, to make another division at about
age 13, marked by the sacrament of Confirmation, but generally,
anyone over seven was spoken to and treated as an adult.

Over the last five centuries or more, however, our Western culture
has changed its cognitive view of this matter to become more like the
African, until today we have at least six or more age classifications:
infants, children, teens or adolescents, the college crowd, the

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young marrieds, middle-aged people, and retired persons. There is
increasing segregation of these — in education, in living quarters,
in reading and entertainment, and in commercial markets (as in a
department store).

The generation gap has become a familiar problem, and
communication across age-group barriers has become a major issue.
Moreover, female preference for the adolescent period has given us
hordes of 40-year-old women trying to look like adolescents. The
influence of such cognitive changes on all aspects of life is evident.

The power and affluence of Western civilization do not result from our
technology, our political structure, or even our economic organization
but from our cognitive system, on which they are based. That system
began to develop before 500 B.C. with the introduction of the idea,
in Palestine and Persia, of one God — omnipotent, omniscient, and
perfect — and with the growth of two-valued logic in Persia and
Greece.

Although our cognitive system has made our civilization the richest
and mightiest in the world, its continued use without cognitive
sophistication is leading us to disaster. Lynn White, Jr., pointed this
out in his article, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” in
Science for March 10, 1967.

Professor White’s thesis is that when the Judeo-Christian faith
established the view that there is no spirit in nature other than the
human, the world was reduced to a created object to be exploited by
humans, and the way was thus opened to the destruction of nature
and to the total pollution of the world — a consequence that may have
become inevitable with the rejection, in the latter thirteenth century,
of the message of St. Francis to treat all nature as sacred.

The cognitive techniques derived from our underlying outlook have
included (a) using analysis rather than synthesis in seeking answers
to problems; (b) isolating problems and studying them in a vacuum
instead of using an ecological approach; (c) using techniques based
on quantification rather than on qualification study done in a contextual

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situation; (d) proceeding on the assumption of single-factor causation
rather than pluralistic, ecological causation; and (e) basing decisions
and actions on needs of the individual rather than needs of the group.

In our society, if we want to know how something functions, we take
it apart, cut it up, isolate it from its context; we analyze its factors and
assume that only one is an independent variable. We then quantify the
changes this independent variable makes in all the other variables that
are assumed to be dependent on it. Then we make the independent
variable one link in a chain of such independent variables, each
surrounded by its system of dependent variables, the whole forming
a chain going back to some original cause in the past or extending
forward in a similar chain to some ultimate goal in the future.

From such reasoning, given to us from the Greeks through Aristotle,
we got the “final” causes (or goals) and the “Unmoved Mover” (that
which is the first cause of all movement and does not itself move) of
Aristotelian metaphysics, and, today, we still use this way of thinking,
even though we no longer believe in Aristotle’s metaphysics.

The now obsolescent mode of thought and cognition just
described might be contrasted with a newer method which
is, incidentally, closer to the thinking processes of southern
and eastern Asia, which were never much influenced by
transcendental Hebrew monotheism or by Greek two-valued logic.

This newer (or older) way of looking at experience tries to find how
anything functions by seeing its relationships to a larger system and,
ultimately, to the whole cosmos. To do so, it uses an ecological and
qualitative approach, seeking to grasp the whole contextual situation
of innumerable factors, all of which are changing at once, not only by
quantitative changes within a fixed identity (such as Western logic
can handle) but with constant shifts of identity and quality.

This more intuitive and less logical point of view is now sweeping
the West as is evidenced by the fact that our traditional Western
categories and cognitive assumptions were rejected not only by
youthful hippies but also by those hardheaded, analytical people on

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whom the survival of the West depends.

The stumbling block, of course, is that our whole institutional setup
is based on the old method of thought. For example, our educational
system is based on the methods of categorization, specialization, and
quantification, which must be replaced. This old method of thought is
seen on the lower levels, where objective tests assume such things
as two-valued logic (True, False), the principle of contradiction (Yes,
No), and the principle of retained identity, just as, on the highest levels,
the great increase in the use of computers assumes the possibility of
objective analysis and quantification of life experiences.

It is difficult to reform our old methods of thinking no matter how
bankrupt they may be. Standing in the way of change are the
pressures exerted by institutionalized establishments, the profits of
powerful groups producing equipment based on old ways of thinking,
and the need which the large bureaucratized organizations have for
persons with narrow technical training in the older cognitive patterns.

On the other hand, if we do not make such reforms, we may well
be destroyed by problems that cannot be handled by the established
methods of specialization, isolation, and quantification. These
problems are already swallowing us up in the crises of environmental
destruction, urban blight, social and racial tensions, poor mental
health, and international conflicts that threaten to lead to nuclear
annihilation.

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THE PARTISAN SIDE OF QUIGLEY

Background: GU Philosophy Department chairman Tom McTighe had
been an early supporter of Sen. Eugene McCarthy in his campaign
to win in 1 968 the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in
opposition to the expected effort of then President Lyndon Johnson’s
to run again.

Many Democrats that year had urged Sen. Robert Kennedy to
lead the resisters to anti-Viet Nam war in opposing a Johnson re-
nomination, but Kennedy chose to hold back and only McCarthy
made the effort.

Then, when McCarthy came very close to beating Johnson in the
early New Hampshire primary, Kennedy re-considered and decided to
enter the race-taking much of the wind out of the sails of McCarthy’s
movement.

McTighe wrote an article in The HOYA urging anti-war Dems to stick
with McCarthy and said some negative things about Kennedy’s last
minute decision to run.

Quigley, ever a strong Kennedy family man, responded with this
letter:

Thursday, May 2, 1968 THE HOYA
Letters to the Editor...

RASH JUDGMENT

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To the Editor:

In a democracy every citizen has the right to have and to express
his political opinions. It is, however, incumbent upon teachers, and,
especially upon those who call themselves philosophers, to practice
self-restraint in the exercising of these rights. By that I mean no
professor, especially when he is advising students, and above all
when he is a philosopher, should allow himself to appear in print
when he is in a state of purely emotional reaction on a subject which
he is obviously ignorant. Professor McTighe’s article in THE HOYA
of 4 April, was written, he says, while he was boiling with anger (for
a week!). His personal remarks on Senator Kennedy are both non-
philosophical and ignorant. The Senator’s personality is nothing like
what Professor McTighe seems to believe. The professor may know
nothing about the Senator’s personality. If so, he should recognize
that fact and keep quiet on a subject on which he is ignorant. The
professor also knows nothing about the Senator’s views on the issues
and says, “About all he has come up with are tired generalities and
absurd accusations blaming Johnson for all the ills of society.”

Professor McTighe should be told that no person mentioned today for
the presidency has given his views on more issues and in more detail
over the past five years that Senator Kennedy. If Professor McTighe
ignored these statements, that is his right, but, when he made the
decision to ignore them, he should also have made the decision to
refrain from public statements on matters on which he had decided
to be ignorant. The worthy professor asks, “Has Senator Kennedy
anything solid to offer on the agonizing problem of Viet Nam?” I
am astonished. Does he not know that the Senator has offered
detailed plans on this? As one who has read millions of words on this
subject, I am prepared to say that the chapter on Vietnam in Senator
Kennedy’s book, To Seek a Newer World, published last year, is the
best brief statement (in 30 pages) on what went wrong in that area

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and what should be done about it. On this and other matters, the
Senator’s knowledge of specific detail and his willingness to express
frank opinions on his views are matched by few public figures in this
country. It is a shame that Professor McTighe has not been paying
attention and does not know this.

Carroll Quigley
Professor of History

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MEXICAN NATIONAL CHARACTER AND CIRCUM-
MEDITERRANEAN PERSONALITY STRUCTURE

An article by Carroll Quigley in the American Anthropologist,
Volume 75, Number 1, February 1973, pp. 319-322:

Martin Needler’s article on “Politics and National Character: the
Case of Mexico” (1971) is perfectly correct as far as it goes, but it
must be pointed out that the personality traits which he identifies as
Mexican are products of a considerably wider and much older cultural
entity. Mexico is a peripheral and very distinctive example of the Latin
American cultural area which is itself a peripheral and somewhat
distinctive example of the Mediterranean cultural area. Some time
ago I identified the whole cultural area and the personality structure
it tended to produce as aspects of “the Pakistani-Peruvian Axis”
(1966:1112-1122, reprinted as 1968:452-463). If I am correct in this,
Needier is parochial in attributing “Mexican national character” to a
combination of “the Indian’s fatalism and the proud self-assertion of
the Spaniard” (Needier 1971:757).

A broader view of this subject would show that Mexico is a peripheral
example of the “Pakistani-Peruvian cultural area” and that Mexican
national character is merely a local variant of the personality structure
of this larger area. That is why Silverman’s picture of south Italian
personality is so similar to Needler’s idea of Mexican character
(Silverman 1968).

This Mediterranean personality type is marked by various traits
mentioned by Needier: low self-esteem, fatalism, defeatism, distrust
of all persons outside a narrow kin group, pessimism, preoccupation
with death, self-assertion, and machismo. These traits, however,
should be associated in clusters and correlated with other cultural
manifestations such as: (1) low respect for manual work, especially

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for agricultural work; (2) higher esteem for urban residence than
for rural living, associated with neglect of the countryside, damage
to natural vegetation, and much cruelty to animals, especially to
domestic animals; (3) emphasis on honor, both personal and family,
as a chief aim of life; (4) dietary customs which mix protein and
vegetables within a nest or container of starch, on the same plate and
in the same mouthful, unlike the core of Western civilization, which
tends to segregate these three kinds of food, on the same plate or
even into separate dishes. The personality traits of this larger area
tend to cluster about two points: (1) The restriction of personal trust
and loyalty within the kinship group (usually the extended or nuclear
family) with a consequent inability to offer loyalty, trust, or personal
identification to residential groups (villages, neighborhoods, parishes),
voluntary associations, religious beliefs, or the secular state, resulting
in large-scale lack of “public spirit, ’’combined with “corruption, ’’and
paralysis of these other kinds of associations. (2) The combination of
powerful patriarchal social tendencies with female inferiority (except
as a mechanism for producing sons) leads to many psychological
ambiguities: strong emphasis on female premarital virginity (both as
a symbol of family honor and as an economic good), segregation
of the sexes in social life, fear of women as a threat men’s virility
(witches and belief in “the evil eye” ), the need to demonstrate male
virility by social “touchiness” and other behavior, including fantasies
of demonstrations of male dominance over bulls, other men, and
unattached women.

In the last generation or two, we have had numerous local studies
of the culture-and-personality type dealing with portions of this wide
area (Pitt-Rivers and Kenny on Spain; Banfield, Moss, Cancian,
Silverman, and others on Italy; Campbell, Kavadias, Kanelli and
others on Greece; and numerous studies of the Near East or North
Africa). Many of these consider the personality types they observe as
consequences of local conditions of economic, national, religious, or
historic origin. A few have seen the wider range of what they observe.

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Thus Balikci (1966:164) wrote, “Behind obvious cultural differences,
many Mediterranean societies share certain basic cultural patterns...
[with] basic cross-cultural similarities in regard to sex behavior, certain
family roles, the position of the family in society, and the dichotomy of
kinsmen and strangers. ’’Opler (1970:866) recognizes both the areal
spread and the deep historical roots of these traits when he writes,
“The Southern Italian family is in great measure understood if one
considers it as a peasant society, as a circum-Mediterranean type,
as one influenced by Roman history or even by the earlier pagan
Classic Greek, or later Hellenistic traditions.”

What I wish to emphasize is that this personality structure is
geographically wider than the Mediterranean, since it extends to Latin
America, and is the consequence of historical experience going back
even earlier than the ancient Greeks. There are works (Peristiany
1 966) which see some of the geographic range, but from both points
of view, the most suggestive work is Raphael Patai’s Golden River
to Golden Road (1962), whose original title (now abandoned in a
1971 edition) shows that his attention extends from Rio de Oro to
Samarkand.

The Pakistani-Peruvian axis does not now demark the area of a
functioning society or civilization. This is one of the chief keys to its
personality types. It is now largely an area of debris of traits and
peoples surviving from the wreckage of deceased civilizations. The
existing traits have historical origins covering thousands of years. For
example, the diet, sexual symbolism of bull and “eye,” architecture,
and other traits come from the archaic cultures before 600 B.C.,
including Minoan Crete; the urbanism and low esteem for manual
labor derive from Classical Mediterranean society; while the emphasis
on honor, female inferiority, and kinship groups flow from pastoral
invaders, both from the northern grasslands (Indo-European) and
the southern grasslands (Semites).

Other traits, such as fatalism, distrust of strangers, cynicism toward
the state or the local community, come from the difficulties of farming

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in the Mediterranean environment or from Mediterranean history.
Historically the Mediterranean has passed through three distinct
experiences: (1 ) as a frontier area of cultural diffusion from Western
Asia during the Archaic period (4500-600 B.C.); (2) as the central
backbone of Mediterranean civilization in the Classical period (600
B.C.-A.D. 600), and (3) as a boundary conflict area between the
three post-Classical civilizations (Byzantine, Western, and Islamic)
since A.D. 600. T he shift from the second to the third of these was so
disruptive of community life in the area from the Golden River to the
Golden Road that its problems have not been solved since, especially
in view of the social and ethical failures of the two post-Classical
religions, Christianity and Islam, on either side of the line from Tangier
to Batum. These failures of religion, whose consequences were
clearly seen by Christ and Mohomet, made it impossible to create any
religious, territorial, or social community, and forced living patterns
back toward the “amoral familisirT’of the extended family. In extreme
cases this broke down further to amoral nuclear familism or even
to amoral individualism. This basic outlook and personality type
was given a distinctive twist in the Iberian peninsula, from Saracen
and anti-lslamic influences. The export of this distinctive type to
America and the changes made in it by the shattering of American
Indian cultures gives us the distinctive Latin American personality
patterns which Needler(1971)sees as “Mexican national character.”
These patterns have been modified in various circumstances by
the “culture of poverty,” by modem industrialism and nationalism,
by various nineteenth century ideologies such as Marxism, and by
other influences, but the basic Pakistani-Peruvian outlook is still
identifiable. What is distinctly Mexican, and potentially revolutionary,
is the new political ideology which Needier reports thus: “the cynicism
and alienation of Mexican respondents. . . did not extend to two
elements of the political system: the president himself and the idea
of the Mexican Revolution” (1971 :760). Any discussion of Mexican
national character should recognize the revolutionary implications

COLLECTED WRITINGS

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -366

of these exceptions and the remote sources of the other aspects of
Mexican personality.

Silverman, who has a good appreciation of this Pakistani-Peruvian
cultural area, has also glimpsed the nature of its northern boundary.
This boundary, which roughly follows the lines of the Highland Zone of
the Old World, is marked by the southern limits of the archaic peasant
cultures, in which rural life was valued higher than urbanism, the land
was loved (as a female entity), pride in skillful tillage was evident,
fertility was prized over virility, and the cow was more valuable than the
bull (whose usefulness was increased by castration). In this peasant
culture the southern concept of honor was non-existent, female
virginity or chastity were considered unnatural, pre-marital sexual
relations were practiced (often condoned by a betrothal ceremony),
and marriage often followed pregnancy, rather than preceding coition
as in the south. This peasant culture accepted a female centered
house-hold and tended to revere local, semi-pagan, female saints (or
Mary seen as a Mother rather than as a Virgin) instead of the rather
war-like male saints popular farther south. Above all, in the north the
basic social units were territorial (villages or parishes), not kinship
groups, and functioned as communities.

Studies of these distinctions are frustrated today by academic
specialization, both areal and chronological, so that students attribute
cause to whatever social feature strikes them as significant. This
includes ethos (Banfield 1958), agricultural organization (Silverman
1968), transhumance pastoralism (Campbell 1964), Bedouin
Arabism (Carmichael 1967), urbanism (Pitkin 1963:123.129), social
hopelessness (Cancian 1961), and many others. A comparison of the
similarities of values and personality between a rural pastoral people
like the Saracatsan (Campbell 1964) and a modern, professional,
urban Greek family (Kanelli 1963) will show the need to seek
explanation on a wider and deeper areal and historical foundation.

This foundation must be a historical-cultural framework similar to
that used in historical geology, so that local outcroppings of earlier

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CARROLL QUIGLEY

cultural strata can be identified and coordinated. I gave a brief outline
of such a framework for the Old World in 1961, but other historians
have rather scorned any efforts at establishing a matrix of macro-
history. Feeble efforts are now being made to remedy this lack in other
disciplines, including anthropology and sociology, but these attempts
will find almost insurmountable difficulties so long as historians do
not do their part of the task.

REFERENCES CITED

• Balikci, Asen; 1966 Review of Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society; J. G.
Peristiany, Ed. Science 153:164.

• Banfield, Edward C.; 1958 The Moral Basis of a Backward Society; Chicago: Free Press.

• Campbell, John K.; 1964 Honour, Family, and Patronage. A Study of Institutions and Moral
Values in a Greek Mountain Community; London: Oxford University Press.

• Gancian, Frank; 1961 The South Italian Peasant: World View and Political Behavior;
Anthropological Quarterly 34:1-18.

• Carmichael, Joel; 1 967 The Shaping of the Arabs; a Study in Ethnic Identity; New York:
Macmillan.

• Kanelli, Sheelagb; 1965 Earth and Water: A Marriage into Greece; New York: Coward-
McCann.

• Kavadias, Georges B.; 1965 Pasteur-nomades mediterranees: Les Saracatsans de Grece;
Paris: Gauthier-Villars.

• Kenny, Michael; 1960 Patterns of Patronage in Spain; Anthropological Quarterly 33:14-22.

• Moss, Leonard W.; 1960 Patterns of Kinship, Comparaggio, and Community in a Southern
Italian Village; Anthropological Quarterly 33:24-32.

• Needier, Martin C.; 1971 Politics and National Character-The Case of Mexico; American
Anthropologist 73:757-761 .

• Opler, Marvin K.; 1970 Review of Belief, Magic, and Anomie: Essays in Psychosocial
Anthropology,; by Anne Parsons; American Anthropologist 72:865-867.

• Patai, Raphael; 1962 Golden River to Golden Road: Society, Culture, and Change in the
Middle East; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1971 Society, Culture, and

COLLECTED WRITINGS

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -368

Change in the Middle East. Revised edition; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press;

• Peristiany, Jean G., Ed.; 1966 Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Pitkin, Donald S.; 1963 Mediterranean Europe; Anthropological Quarterly 36:120.129.

• Pitt. Rivers, Julian; 1971 The People of the Sierra. Revised edition; Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. (First published in 1954.)

• Quigley, Carroll; 1961 The Evolution of Civilizations; New York: Macmillan; 1966 Tragedy and
Hope: A History of the World in Our Time; New York: Macmillan.; 1968 The World Since 1939:
A History; New York: Collier Books.

• Silverman, Sydel R; 1968 Agricultural Organization, Social Structure, and Values in Italy:;
Amoral Familism Reconsidered; American Anthropologist 70:1.20.

369 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

THE # 74
INTERVIEW

1974 INTERVIEW WITH RUDYMAXA
OF THE WASHINGTON POST

QUIGLEY: the year, which would be to the end of ‘44, and by that
time we were ready to take over and move them in and so forth.
Now, in that group there were fifty-five who already had Ph.D.s.

You see.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: So it was a very good group.

The only one I had any trouble with had been a district attorney in
Indiana and a Republican politician.

INTERVIEWER: Ha, ha, ha.

QUIGLEY: And I had trouble with him over certain things.

For example, the civil war in Spain.

I gave him the truth of the civil war in Spain.

I mean, this was not a Communist revolt against the Catholic Church
or something like this, you see.

And that was what this guy was.

So... this is the substance of the book Tragedy and Hope’.

Do you see?

INTERVIEWER: Did you know while you were working on this that
[it was going to be a book]?

QUIGLEY: No, no. I was just trying... you know.

INTERVIEWER: Keep up.

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QUIGLEY: Keep a day to day basis.

INTERVIEWER: You realized that at the end of the accumulation,
of research and...?

QUIGLEY: Well, yes, I knew... I knew a hell of a lot more about most
of this than most people.

Now, I then spent 20 years writing it — from ‘45 to ‘65.

And put it in, you see, in ‘65. In the meantime, I had written a shorter
book which fifteen publishers had rejected. And I had set it aside.

I had, wrote it the first time in the only summer I had off, which was
1942.

In that whole period, I went twenty years without any time off.

No sabbaticals, no anything. From ‘42 to... ‘60, ‘61, when I took off
and went to England and did research.

And then I got another sabbatical in 71 , when I again went to England
on a sabbatical.

And I only... So... The only sabbatical time.

Whether I get it or not, I have asked for a one semester sabbatical
before I retire, that is assuming I get full pay for one semester, you
see, instead of half pay, or whatever it is. I don’t know what it is.
And I can’t even look it... I don’t have time, time to look it up.

But in any case, I... worked out all of these things.

And, my first book had been rejected by fifteen publishers.

I had written it first in the summer of ‘34; I then spent the summer of ‘42
in Princeton, in Donald Stauffer’s [office] — and he died as Eastman
Professor of Literature at Oxford, after climbing the Pyranees, running
up and down the Pyranees — and... I re-wrote it in ‘42. Then, I set
that aside and wrote it a third time — just dashed it off — and that is
the book The Evolution of Civilizations’ — it’s only 279 pages, but
it’s still the best thing, and there are a number of books that quoted
it as the best thing on why civilizations rise and fall, and how they
do, and so forth.

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -374

So it’s a big thing.

Now this... The World Since 1914’ covers seventy years, from 1895
to 1965, and it’s in that way, but it covers the whole world, so again
it’s a pretty big thing, because it goes into science and technology, as
you will discover, if you start reading the paperback, and... economics,
and as you see, I can do more with economics than economists can.

INTERVIEWER: One thing that intrigues me, more on just that (last
night my wife and I were talking about you), was the title of the book:
Tragedy and Hope’.

QUIGLEY: ... “And Hope”. Yes. Because I...

INTERVIEWER: Such a large title.

QUIGLEY: Yes. Now what it means is this: I think it is absolutely
tragic, it is shameful, it is sinful that Western Civilization is going to
go down the drain.

When I wrote that book, which was less than ten years ago, I had
hoped that we could save Western Civilization.

I am extremely skeptical now that it can be saved.

I think we’re just about finished.

And I just threw a few things out here this morning in the class.

You know, if we are going to allow a coal strike and if we are going
to overthrow the Portuguese government.

Because as soon as... all these military dictatorships are not going
to last.

So we get rid of a democracy because it wants to be a little liberal,
and we put in a military dictatorship which then collapses and what
happens? The Communists come in.

This is what happened in Portugal. Salazar was there since 1927.
You see?

All right, now they suddenly try to establish some kind of a non-military
dictatorship — he wasn’t military, he was a college professor, but he

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was supported by... the reactionary groups.

And now they want to do something about that.

And the same thing could happen in Greece.

They’re now going to, probably, in Greece try these generals who
established the military dictatorship because we got them to do it.
You see.

And, this gives the Communists — and it could well be — now this is
what’s worrying Kissinger, he thinks the whole Mediterranean now is
going to go Communist. So we’re going to go to war to prevent this?
Oh, I mean, it’s sick.

INTERVIEWER: Now, let me go back.

QUIGLEY: Yeah. Now...

INTERVIEWER: When did you find a publisher for your book?

QUIGLEY: I found a publisher instantly, because the first book —
I’m in ‘Current History’, an editor, and I wrote, used to write, a good
deal for them.

(And that’s who called me up on Monday and wants me to write about
Spain to-day. What’s going to happen in Spain and I said, I, it would
take too much time, I don’t want to do it).

So the people at ‘Current History’ said to me, in 1960.

I... just mentioned that I had this book.

(I have many books, I have a whole lot of books, half written and
almost totally written, you see).

And they said, “Have you ever given... asked Peter Ritner?” And I
said, “I never heard of him. Who is he?

They said, “Call him up, at Macmillan”. So I went right to the “phone
— I was at the American Historical Association in New York, the
meeting of 1960 — and I went to the phone and called Macmillan
and asked for Peter Ritner and he came on, and I said ‘I have a book

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -376

and I have somebody here who’s the editor of ‘Current History’ who
says that you would like it.’ And so forth.

He says ‘Send it to me.’ A week later I got a letter from him: ‘It’s a
marvelous book’.

INTERVIEWER: How many pages did you send him?

QUIGLEY: I sent him the whole thing.

INTERVIEWER: Which was?

QUIGLEY: And, well...

INTERVIEWER: In fact.

QUIGLEY: Yeah. Just about...

INTERVIEWER: In fact!

QUIGLEY: It came out as a book of 279 pages. He accepted it within
a week.

INTERVIEWER: Which book is this now?

QUIGLEY: This is the first book.

INTERVIEWER: The first book. O.K.

QUIGLEY: Right.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: This is in 1961 . You’ll find all of this in “Who’s Who?”You

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see. The dates.

INTERVIEWER: All right.

QUIGLEY: That is how I got my first book published.

Now when I signed the contract for that, 1961.

INTERVIEWER: Uh... Huh.

QUIGLEY: They... made me agree I would give them my next book.
INTERVIEWER: Sure.

QUIGLEY: You see. So in a couple of years I said to Peter Ritner
that I want the next book to be The World Since 1914’ and he said
‘O.K., let’s sign a contact’.

INTERVIEWER: Did he say anything like ‘That’s a rather large
subject’?

QUIGLEY: ... Peter Ritner thinks I am the greatest writer ever around.

INTERVIEWER: O.K. Is he an editor?

QUIGLEY: He’s a scholar. That’s who... You see.

Now here’s what happened.

And I don’t know whether you want to get this on tape or not.

But I’ll put it on tape. But look... you’ve gotta be discrete.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

QUIGLEY: You know, you have to protect my future.

THE 74 INTERVIEW

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -378

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

QUIGLEY: As well as your own.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

QUIGLEY: All right. Ah, when Tragedy and Hope’ was signed, the
contract and rights, up to the last minute, which would be the spring
and summer of ‘66, they were planning to bring it out in two volumes,
boxed, for $17.50.

INTERVIEWER: Uh... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Macmillan had been bought by, from Harold Macmillan,
at Macmillan Company of England.

INTERVIEWER: Uh... Huh.

QUIGLEY: for $5 million. Because he needed the cash. In the
summer of ‘66, a holding company, Collier Books, which originally
was Morgan... and they published Collier’s Magazine. Remember
Collier’s Weekly?

And stuff like? All right. Collier’s Books. Now, I don’t know who controls
it now.

And, it’s one of these holding companies.

INTERVIEWER: Uh... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Came in... they bought up the Free Press, you know, in
Illinois.

They bought up Brentano Book Stores. They bought up Macmillan.
They came in and they looked at what they’d bought and they said
‘You’re spending money wildly and we’re not taking in money. You

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CARROLL QUIGLEY

got to stop it’.

INTERVIEWER: The accountants did that?

QUIGLEY: Yeah. So they said ‘No advertising on any books that are
published for the next six months. You spent too much on advertising’.
And, the editors like Peter Ritner screamed and said ‘We’re not going
to stay if this is how you’re going to do things’.

So they said ‘All right. One ad for each book’.

All right, I got one ad for Tragedy and Hope’, and it was a quarter
page in The New York Times Book Review, I believe.

That’s all.

INTERVIEWER: How do you spell Ritner’s name?

QUIGLEY: R-l-T-N-E-R, Peter Ritner. He, I imagine he’s in “Who’s
Who?”... he should be. Anyway, he has since left them. I do not know
what he is doing.

He still lives in the same place that I visited him in Riverside Drive,
up near the George Washington Bridge.

But he works for some World Book... thing. Or something.

INTERVIEWER: Third World Publishers?

QUIGLEY: Eh, Something else. And what he does I don’t know,
because he’s never got in touch with me since he left.

INTERVIEWER: And they also did not come out with the two volumes.

QUIGLEY: No. And then, when they saw it, they said “Oh, this is going
to cost too much. Cut it to one volume and cut the price five bucks”.
So they, that made it $12.50.

But they never sold it at $12.50. They made it $12.95.

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -380

So this is what it was sold.

Now, it went out of print, that was ‘66, it went out of print in ‘68.

But in ‘68 Collier Books got in touch with me, I do not know how or
why, and said... “We’ll bring out the last half of this as a paperback”,
and that’s what I gave you. That came out in ‘68.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: And that, I think, is still in print.

But I can’t get an answer. I can’t get a straight answer to any question,
from them. For example: They never told me until 1 974, when I was
trying to fight the pirate who reprinted Tragedy and Hope’.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: That it had been out of print. They’d told me it’s out of
stock and we will re-publish when we get two thousand [orders].

But they never could get two thousand (I have told you this, haven’t
I?).

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: Because they were telling everyone who wrote in that it
is out of print.

INTERVIEWER: Now.

QUIGLEY: They lied to me.

INTERVIEWER: Now, when did you realize there was a pirate edition?
How did you find out?

QUIGLEY: I found out... telling everyone who wrote in that it is out

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CARROLL QUIGLEY

of print.

INTERVIEWER: Now.

QUIGLEY: Which they denied to me.

INTERVIEWER: Now, when did you realize there was a pirate edition?
How did you find out?

QUIGLEY: I found out when somebody got a plain envelope with a
slip of paper in it: ‘Available again, in short supply.’

INTERVIEWER: Tragedy and Hope’, the whole book?

QUIGLEY: The whole book. And they...

INTERVIEWER: They came to you and said...?

QUIGLEY: No, they called me up and said, eh ‘Did you know that
your book is re-printed?’

I said ‘Which book?’ (Because they’re both out of print, you see.)
And they said Tragedy and Hope’. I said ‘No, it isn’t.’

INTERVIEWER: You don’t know who this person was?

QUIGLEY: No, no. Because it’s exact copy. Exact.

The dust jacket, everything, the binding is the same.

INTERVIEWER: Did they re-set the type? Or is it photo-reproduced?

QUIGLEY: Photo... photo-reproduction. Exactly the same. Now, I
can tell instantly that it’s different. Because they didn’t notice that the
original had a gold, had yellow top on the pages. Here...

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -382

INTERVIEWER: All right.

QUIGLEY: You see, the original. The new one is white.

INTERVIEWER: So you, I would imagine, would call Macmillan and
say ‘Hey, you must be upset that they’re re-printed?’ That would be
a logical reaction...

QUIGLEY: They didn’t give a damn, and I’ll tell you why.

INTERVIEWER: Well did you call...? How much is? Well, we’ll
talk when we’re done with it. And I’ll ask you how much it is you’re
comfortable with, in light of your losses, etc., etc.

QUIGLEY: Yeah. Well.

INTERVIEWER: O.K.?

QUIGLEY: I don’t, I don’t know.

INTERVIEWER: We can talk about that.

QUIGLEY: And I don’t know why Macmillan acted like this. Now,
immediately...

INTERVIEWER: But my logical reaction would be to call Macmillan
and say, ‘Gee, you must really be upset’?

QUIGLEY: No, I didn’t. I, not right away, I didn’t. Because they had
lied to me so many times on so many [occasions].

INTERVIEWER: You already knew...

QUIGLEY: That there’s something funny. They lied and lied and

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lied and lied to me, you see. On, on everything. And... I have letters
to prove that, because I had from Ritner letters apologizing for
information previously given to him. Because, they had lied to him
when he called up to ask...

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: ...if they’re out of print or not, you see. And they said ‘no’,
and so forth.

Now, oh, oh, the big thing is. My contract, both, had in it that, if it went
out of print, I had the right to recover the plates.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: They never got in touch with me offering the plates.
I learned in March of this year that they destroyed the plates, of
Tragedy and Hope’. I learned in the summer, 1971, because my
wife got mad and called Macmillan on the phone, every week, while
I was in England, and finally got from them a letter in which they said
the plates had been destroyed. They said ‘inadvertently destroyed.’
The plates of the first book, ‘Evolution of Civilizations.’ You see?

INTERVIEWER: Umm, hmm. O.K. So you find, so a guy calls you,
an anonymous caller...

QUIGLEY: Yeah, well, he identified himself, you know, to me, but
he, he... No. And he gave me his name and so forth. And he had
got this, and...

Do you want to shut that off? One second?

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

QUIGLEY: And the way I found out was: I sent an order. I let somebody

THE 74 INTERVIEW

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -384

else send an order.

Now this was my assistant, who sent a check... sent an order.

And nothing came. And then we discovered they’d only pay if you
sent them cash ahead of time, you see.

INTERVIEWER: A check wouldn’t do?

QUIGLEY: Well, I guess I did sent a check.

INTERVIEWER: But not enough?

QUIGLEY: No, I sent the check. The whole thing.

But they, for example, will not send to book stores unless they send
cash.

And they’re all suspicious. Because if you ordered ten copies and
that would be $120, because he was asking $12.
eh, you, he could vanish, because there was no way to find out who
it is.

INTERVIEWER: Sure.

QUIGLEY: You have no name. You have a box number, out in
California, and so forth.

And anyway, I... I couldn’t find out anything.

I gave... got it back. And I was shocked, because it was identical,
you see, or almost identical. So then I got [word] other companies
were offering it.

INTERVIEWER: When is this now?

QUIGLEY: This was in... this year.

INTERVIEWER: This year?

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QUIGLEY: Yes, January.

INTERVIEWER: January this year?

QUIGLEY: in 1974.

INTERVIEWER: O.K.

QUIGLEY: This year. By March somebody came to me and had one
of the pirated copies.

I said ‘Where’d you get it?’ And then he said ‘Sidney Kramer.’

I said ‘Does he have it?’ and he said ‘Sure. He has four or five of
them there.’

So I called up Sidney Kramer and asked if he had it, and he said ‘Yes’.
And I went down there. And... ah, he is very hard to get information
out of.

But finally I found out that he sent an order in and they... sent back...
‘Send me a check and I’ll send ‘em.’ You see?

And he sold them and repeated the order and repeated the order,
and so forth.

So then I told our bookstore.

INTERVIEWER: Using the same address you have.

QUIGLEY: ... yes, he was using...

INTERVIEWER: You still do not know who that is. I mean, at that
time, you did not know who it is.

QUIGLEY: I still am not certain...

INTERVIEWER: Really?

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -386

QUIGLEY: ...who it is, and I will now, and I’ll tell you why... one of
the places that was offering them for sale and there were about five
places that were offering it for sale, and I’ve got, since, a number of
others... They come to me from students or, fate. They don’t come
right to me directly, ever. — now, no one ever approached me. Oh,
one reason I was suspicious of Macmillan was this: The first, the fact
that the radical right, the John Birch Society and so forth, was getting
all up over this book...

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: ...goes back to at least ‘69.

INTERVIEWER: I was going to ask you about that.

QUIGLEY: ‘69. Yes. And, a book appeared called The Naked
Capitalist’ by Skousens.

Now, of that book, about a fifth of it is direct quote from my book.
INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Now, he says it’s from my book. It’s in quotation marks.
But nevertheless it’s a violation of copyright.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: I got in touch with Macmillan. They would not do a thing.
They said, I said ‘Aren’t you going to defend my copyright?’ And they
said ‘No. If you want to do something, we will support you (and... you
know) and be a witness, if you want’, and so forth. But I... I wasn’t
going to sue this guy. He’s a professor of religion at Brigham Young
University, former police chief of Salt Lake City.

You know all about him?

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INTERVIEWER: About him, yeah.

QUIGLEY: All right.

INTERVIEWER: He’s run the gamut, I know.

QUIGLEY: So whether... He has — had been with the F.B.I. for years.
INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: So whether he would have any money...? It wouldn’t be
worth my while to sue him, you see. Probably. And another state,
and so forth. So I decided I’d let that go. But then I discovered they
[Macmillan] wouldn’t do anything.

And, then, Congressman Rarick, who was beaten in the primary just
now, put that [Skousen] book into, uh...

INTERVIEWER: The Congressional Record?

QUIGLEY: Yeah, into The Congressional Record’. And a lot of things
like this. Then this [Allen] book was distributed to every registered
voter in New Hampshire.

INTERVIEWER: And no point, they never called you and said, and
I have no quotes. I mean.

QUIGLEY: No. Nobody ever.

INTERVIEWER: It’s like writing a story without ever talking with you.
QUIGLEY: Yeah. Nobody ever wrote to me.

INTERVIEWER: Do you?

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QUIGLEY: Hmm?

INTERVIEWER: Do you know where they got the picture of you?
The PR office here [at Georgetown University]?

QUIGLEY: All right. I think. Let me see which picture it is.

INTERVIEWER: It’s up front there.

QUIGLEY: They tried to get pictures from the PR office. And I said
‘Don’t give anybody a picture if they won’t tell you why.’

INTERVIEWER: ... Hmm.

QUIGLEY: Oh, they got this is from the PR office. Now Skousens
couldn’t get a picture of me.

INTERVIEWER: Hmm.

QUIGLEY: You see, they could have gotten off the back of the...
there’s a full picture of me on the back of the jacket of the first book.
From Bachrach, here in town. But you know, that’s the one they have
in the public relations office here now, still.

It’s the only one there is. And that’s where they got that.

INTERVIEWER: It’s a good picture.

QUIGLEY: Well, all right. But then they put it on the same page with
J. P. Morgan, you know. It’s nonsense. To me.

INTERVIEWER: Ha ha ha.

QUIGLEY: You laugh, right to laugh. It’s a joke. But it’s all so silly,

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linking me with Morgan, or any of those people. But then they... full
of statement.

Anyway, Rarick and other people... filled The Congressional Record
with this.

Then the John Birch Society started talking about it in their various
publications — and then, of course, this [Allen] guy is a John Birch
employee.

INTERVIEWER: Sure. Right.

QUIGLEY: And he published, even before this, did he?, the book...
‘Nixon: The Man Behind The Mask’. Yeah, that, that’s in ‘69.

And I knew nothing about that until two weeks ago.

INTERVIEWER: Really?

QUIGLEY: ‘Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask’.

Yes, That’s when one of the priests here met me and said ‘I’ve been
looking for you.’ I said ‘Well, look. It’s free. Go right [ahead] and look
all you want.’ And he said ‘No, I want to ask you about... this Gary
Allen who wrote a book about Nixon.’ And I said ‘Well, I know Gary
Allen, I didn’t know he wrote a book about Nixon.’

(Since I don’t keep up with this stuff.) And he said “Well, I have it
and the whole third chapter is about you, and your book Tragedy
and Hope.’”

I said ‘Really?’ So, he let me have it. And I read it, and it was.

And, now there’s others.

INTERVIEWER: You don’t know Gary Allen personally? Do you?

QUIGLEY: No. Now, here’s what happened. A crisis occurred at
Brigham Young.

And I should not go in it in detail, because I don’t know anything for

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -390

sure.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I know something.

QUIGLEY: All right. A hell of a... The... The campus was blown apart
by a fight between the political science department and Skousens
and in which they declared that he was unworthy to be a Mormon
professor. And should be fired.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: And he defended himself. And what happened I do not
know. All I know is this.

INTERVIEWER: He lost it.

QUIGLEY: Who?

INTERVIEWER: He lost it.

QUIGLEY: Oh, Did he?

INTERVIEWER: And he got ousted.

QUIGLEY: Oh, I didn’t know that. You see, I never find out. Nobody
ever tells me these things.

INTERVIEWER: I’ll check, [mumbles while going through his notes]
I read...

QUIGLEY: So they did get out... they did get rid of him, eh?

INTERVIEWER: He did. I think he lost that fight within the university.
I’ll check, I know more...

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QUIGLEY: Well the reason... All I know about it is this: I gave three
papers at this American Association for the Advancement of Science.
And I going to give you one of them.

INTERVIEWER: Yep.

QUIGLEY: And because they liked it so much, they printed thousands
of them.

Or, you know, processed thousands of them and distributed them
through all the press, in the press room.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: They liked this one. So, it wasn’t the best of them:
‘General Crises in Civilization.’ You know, which, this is an attractive
title.

Now, somebody called me up, and wanted to talk to me, at this.

QUIGLEY: it wasn’t the best of them: ‘General Crises in Civilization.’
You know, which, this is an attractive title.

Now... somebody called me up and wanted to talk to me, at this. And
I think it was at this. And he said his name was Larson and he was a
scientist from Brigham Young and he wanted to see and talk to me
because of what was going on up there. I said ‘What is going on up
there?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, They’re have mass meetings on this’, and he
says ‘It is just an uproar all the time.’ And I didn’t know.

Now, he made an interview with me, and he wanted to play it on the
campus radio, or the local radio, station, and I said ‘All right.’

INTERVIEWER: What was the interview about?

QUIGLEY: About, this, this.

INTERVIEWER: This book?

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QUIGLEY: Yeah, no, about the Skousens controversy. And I said
‘All right. Let me know what happens’ But he never wrote to me. I
never found out. I never made any effort. So I don’t know if it was
ever broadcast or not.

INTERVIEWER: Hmmm. What was, what, why, what was your input
in that. What did you have to say about the Skousens controversy?

QUIGLEY: Well, I simply told him Skousens wrote this book. He
never... talked to me about it.

INTERVIEWER: Never talked with you.

QUIGLEY: He violated my copyright. It’s full of lies. There are things
that are untrue.

It takes things out of context and misinterprets them. And I gave
him the specific things where I disagreed. The group that I’m writing
about was originally, in my mind, the group established secretly by
Lord Milner in 1908, 1909, called The Round Table Group, which
still publishes a quarterly magazine called the The Round Table’
in London, which is one of the world’s best sources of international
relations information since 1910. The first editor of it was Lord Lothian,
at that time Philip Kerr. K-E-R-R. And... nobody knew this, really, for
years. I got to know things. And I investigated that group. You see?

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Now, how I found it is very interesting, I noticed that
prominent people in English life had ‘Fellow of All Souls College’ ...
Lord Halifax, who was the... Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and
then they made him the Ambassador to America. When they take the
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and makes him Ambassador to
Washington, which most people would consider a downward step, it

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shows how important they considered Washington’s support would
be in World War II. You see? All right. He’s a Fellow of All Souls.
The fellow who summoned Neville... Chamberlain, on the 10th of May
1940, and said ‘For God’s sake, go.’ was... Leo Amery. All right. He
was a sidekick, the chief lieutenant, political lieutenant of Lord Milner.
See? And he was a Fellow of All Souls. And so, I decided I would study
All Souls as a purely historical effort. I got the names of all people who
had been Fellows of All Souls from 1899 to whenever I was doing it,
which would be about 1947. And there were one hundred forty-nine
of them. I discovered that most of them were Fellows for only seven
years, which was the regular appointment, which is for seven years.
But some of them were for fifty-five years Fellows of All Souls. A man
named Dougal Malcolm, who was the head of the British South Africa
Company, which is what Rhodesia. You see. And he was fifty-five
years. I discovered that Lord Brand, who had been with Milner in
South Africa, was for years. And he was the head of Lazar Brothers
bankers, in London. And, I discovered that Leo Amery was, for years.
And so forth. And above all, I discovered a man named Lionel Curtis,
who had no right whatever to be a Fellow of All Souls. You get to be
a Fellow of All Souls either because you are a very prominent person
and, as an honorary thing, you will become a honorary fellow for seven
years. Or because you were an outstanding scholar and you get it by
competitive examination when you graduate. That’s how Lord Halifax
got it. His name was... Charles [actually, Edward] Wood. In 1903,
when he graduated from... Oxford, he took a competitive examination
and got it. But he’s kept it. Now I discovered he kept it because he
went immediately to South Africa and met the Kindergarten, which
was the group of people that were running South Africa for Lord
Milner, you see. They were called ‘Kindergarten’ because they were
all young kids.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -394

QUIGLEY: You see. Now these are the ones who remained forever
after ‘Fellows of All Souls.’ Or in Lional Curtis’s case. He’s the man
who said ‘We’ve got to change the name from ‘British Empire’ to
‘Commonwealth of Nations.’ And the reason is they had been students
of Alfred Zimmern, who wrote a book in 1909 called The Greek
Commonwealth’ describing ancient Greece. You see? And who was
the man who made Arnold Toynbee a great classical scholar, do you
see? And brought him into international affairs. Now, I knew none
of this.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: All I knew is, that here were, here was a fellow, Lionel
Curtis, who was such a poor student it took him fifteen years to get
his degree. And then he got it [with] about the lowest pass degree
or something that you could ever get.

INTERVIEWER: Uhm huh. Here he was.

QUIGLEY: And he.. And nobody knew it; nobody ever heard of him.
INTERVIEWER: Right. But he was...

QUIGLEY: Furthermore.

INTERVIEWER: ...in very good company.

QUIGLEY: Furthermore, he was Lord Halifax’s roommate at All Souls
for years. And then I discovered this fellow is behind everything that’s
going on. Lionel Curtis, do you see? Now, I don’t think we should
talk too much about this.

INTERVIEWER: Well, No, I, you see...

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QUIGLEY: All right. All right. But, having discovered that, I met Alfred
Zimmern, when he came here to give a speech. And I said ‘Isn’t this
funny that, that All Souls...’ He said ‘That’s the Round Table Group.’
I had never heard of them. That shows how little I knew. And they’d
been around since 1909 and publishing this magazine from 1910.
And this was 1947. And I said ‘What is the Round Table Group?’ He
named them, who they were. And he said ‘I was a member of them,
for ten years. From 1913. And they added, they brought me in, invited
me because I was in their Workers’ Educational Alliance.’

This is extension programs. Night courses, summer courses for
workers. Workers’ Educational Alliance. And he said... ‘That’s why
they brought me in to it. I was for ten years.’ And he said ‘I resigned
in 1 923 because they were determined to build up Germany against
France.’ He said ‘I wouldn’t stand for it. So I resigned.’

Now, when I met Lord Brand later and asked him about this, he [said]
he had never seen the letter of resignation.

Now, so I’d better start talking, because you see, this gets into all
kinds of things.

INTERVIEWER: O.K.

QUIGLEY: Now, this is. I knew the Round Table group was very
influential. I knew that they were the real founders of the Royal
Institutes of International Affairs. And I knew that, all the stuff that is
in print, that they were they real founders of the Institutes of Pacific
Relations. I knew that they were the godfathers of the... Council on
Foreign Relations here.

INTERVIEWER: Uh hmm.

QUIGLEY: I knew that, for example, you know the big ‘Study of
History,’ many volumes of... Arnold Toynbee?

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -396

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: All right. I knew the manuscripts of that were stored in
Council on Foreign Relations during the War so they wouldn’t be
destroyed by German bombing, do you see?

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: And so forth, and so forth.

So I began to put these things together and discovered that this group
was working for the following things. They were a secret group. They
were working to federate the English-speaking world. They were
closely linked to international bankers... they were working to establish
a world, what I call a three-power world. And that three-power world
was: The Atlantic Bloc (of England and the Commonwealth and the
United States), Germany (Hitler’s Germany), Soviet Russia. The
three power world. They said Germany, we can control because
[it’s] boxed in (and all of this is in my book), it’s boxed in between the
Atlantic Bloc and the Russians. The Russians will behave because
they’re boxed in between the Atlantic Bloc (the American Navy and
Singapore, and so forth) and... the Germans. Do you see?

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: And, therefore... Now, this all described in my book, and
this was their idea.

Now notice, it’s a balance of power system.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: It’s essentially what Kissinger, but he doesn’t know what
he’s doing. He’s bungling everything.

INTERVIEWER: Hmm.

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QUIGLEY: Because he’s just a prima donna, you know... emotionally
unbalanced... person. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. But
it was a good idea. And what he should have been doing is described
by me, and you really should read this, in ‘Current History’ for October
1968. Now, if I had a copy, I’d give it to you.

But I don’t have it. It is how to construct a multi-bloc world, in which
the United States would be secure as the other candidi [sic] and would
be independent and have freedom of action. Do you see?

INTERVIEWER: ... Hmm.

QUIGLEY: But he is blowing it. In one way or another. And the whole
thing is going to explode in his face, I’m afraid. And I hope to God it
doesn’t. Because we cannot afford, you know, another mess like this.
These incompetents. Now... what is said is here, is: these people
are for world domination.

INTERVIEWER: And that you...

QUIGLEY: And the group I am talking about were not.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: They were largely, partly financed, for instance, by the...
by Rhodes, the Rhodes Trust, and the how ...”

They were largely, partly financed, for instance, by the... by Rhodes,
the Rhodes Trust, and the, how Milner got into this was that he was
the chief Rhodes trustee.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: From 1905, when he came back from Africa, until his
death in 1925.

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -398

INTERVIEWER: All right.

QUIGLEY: So, this was a... it’s an Atlantic Bloc. This, you know Streit,
Clarence Streit — S-T-R-E-l-T — ‘Union Now.’ Union now with Great
Britain. All right.

He represents what this group wanted. Clarence S-T-R-E-l- T. If he’s
still alive, he probably lives in Washington. I had his daughter in my
class. And, oh, as a visitor, but not as a student of mine. And, he was
built up by this people as the only solution. This was in my book; His
name and when it happened, and...

INTERVIEWER: By the Round Table people?

QUIGLEY: By the Round Table people. And, it, with, his book ‘Union
Now,’ which came out in 1938, was called, anonymously, in The Round
Table magazine by Lionel Curtis The Only Way.’ It was headed.

It was then reviewed, anonymously, in The Christian Science Monitor
by Lord Lothian as ‘the solution of our problems.’ And what it is
essentially a union of the Atlantic Bloc.

Printed pages.

INTERVIEWER: Not about world domination.

QUIGLEY: Not world domination. Of course, this was Rhodes’ idea.
He wanted the United States in the English... Commonwealth. All
right. Secondly, these people are not pro-Communist, as I know
them, and certainly the Round Table Group, and the Milner Group,
and the people that I’m writing about, and, I notice I follow them up
only through 1940, which is the end of the Morgan bank, when they...
had to incorporate, because of the inheritance tax, and so forth. They
had to incorporate... they were before that... a partnership.

INTERVIEWER: When was the Council on Foreign Relations formed?

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QUIGLEY: It was originally established by a group here, about 1919.
But they had, in the group that we went, is The Inquiry.’ The Inquiry’
was the post-war planning group set up by the Morgan interests in
1917 in the United States, of which the... technical head was... the
head of the American Geographical Society.

All of this...

INTERVIEWER: Governor?

QUIGLEY: ...is in my book. No, no.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, yes.

QUIGLEY: National Geographic.

INTERVIEWER: I’ve got this on my mind.

QUIGLEY: ... Uh.. And, uh. Delahue, was it? No.

INTERVIEWER: Heads up.

QUIGLEY: Well, it doesn’t... It’s in my book. You see the names are
slipping me now.

Anyway, it’s called The Inquiry’. There’s a whole book on it. And it’s
called The Inquiry.’ So you can find it by looking up that title. But you
can find [it] also if you can look in my book. The unfortunate part is
that it’s not in the paperback. ‘Cause, naturally, it’s in the first part,
when they were formed. You see? Which is... in the big... version of
it. Uh. The Inquiry,’ ... got together in Paris, and agreed to establish
an organization, out of which came the Royal Institute of International
Affair[s] and that Royal Institute of International Affairs had branches
in all the Commonwealth countries: Australia, New Zealand, South
Africa, Canada, eventually in India, and they even... I think, had one

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER • 400

somewhere else... Pakistan, when it divided, they established one.
But in the United States, of course, they didn’t have to, ‘cause they
had the Council on Foreign Relations. But when they came over
here... after coming back from Paris, they found that a movement
had begun here already to form a Council on Foreign Relations, and
so they moved in and took it over. And they could do that because
they represented Morgan.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: And in that crowd was... Willard Straight, who was a Morgan
partner. And he died at the Peace Conference of the influenza. And, of
course... the man who was the active... supposed to be, Lamont, Tom
Lamont. He was infamous among the extreme right for supposedly
being a Communist sympathizer, because his son Corliss was the
chief financial sponsor of all kinds of Soviet friendship things, and so
forth, and summoned before a Congressional committee, but flatly
refused to answer any questions, and took his case to the Supreme
Court. And I may be wrong, but I think he won his case. So the right
said that these guys are Communist sympathizers, and are for world
domination, anti-capitalists. They want to destroy America. And a
number of other things. ‘Carroll Quigley proved everything’, they
said. And they constantly misquote me to this effect: that this group
financed the Bolsheviks. I can see no evidence that there was any
financing of the Bolsheviks by the group I’m talking about. You see,
to give you one example of what it in this book. But they’ll all say this.
People wrote to me. They said ‘Do you know about this?’ They
were mostly students. Once I got a letter from my brother in New
Hampshire. He jokingly wrote saying ‘I used to be known as Dr.
Quigley, chairman of the school committee in my town of Hudson,
N.H., but now I’m known as Carroll Quigley’s brother.’

I was mad as hell. These people are not only misrepresenting me,
but I think they’re making me out to be an idiot. ‘They’re saying' I said

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‘all kinds of things I didn’t say’. It varies. Originally, the John Birch
periodical had me as a great guy for revealing this. But then they
became absolutely sour, and they’re now denouncing me. That I’m
a member of The Establishment, and I...

INTERVIEWER: Because you’re repudiating it?

QUIGLEY: I don’t know.

INTERVIEWER: You don’t know why.

QUIGLEY: I don’t know. Really. I’m baffled. I’m baffled by the whole
thing. I don’t know why Macmillan acted the way it did. I don’t know
why... I can think these guys are just trying to make a living. I think
they’d write anything that they got paid for writing. Which is my feeling
about it. So... now, I was... angry about this.

Then somebody called, wrote to me from the University of Nevada,
I believe it was, in Reno. I think. And he was very angry over what
was going on there, over this.

INTERVIEWER: Now this was in... 71 ?

QUIGLEY: No, this would be 73.

INTERVIEWER: 73. That it came to your attention.

QUIGLEY: Oh, wait a [second]. No, this came in the election of 72.

INTERVIEWER: 72.

QUIGLEY: The spring of 72.

INTERVIEWER: O.K. Fine. So right after it came out.

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -402

QUIGLEY: Yeah, I think.

INTERVIEWER: O.K. Then in 73 somebody called you?

QUIGLEY: Then in 73 somebody called me... Now, I can give you the
exact dates of this, if I can get to the papers. But I don’t have them.
Anyway. And he wanted me to do something to stop the influence
that this book [‘None Dare Call It Conspiracy’] was having in Nevada,
particularly as promoting anti-semitism. Because there’s a group of
people who were using this book — and they’re total nuts. I get letters
from them all the time. I can show you some of them, if you want —
complete nuts, who claim that this is a Jewish conspiracy, that is part
of the same thing as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, which we
now know was a Tsarist Russian police forgery of 1 905. And that this
is the same thing as the Illuminati. And the Illuminati were founded
in 1776 by a Bavarian named, I think it’s, White, Weiskopf.

Or something like that. And the Illuminati are a branch of the Masons
and that they took over the Masons, you see. And... the whole thing
is a nightmare.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: That all secret societies are the same secret society.
Now, this was established by nuts. For hundreds of years... there
were people who said the Society of the Cincinnati, in the American
Revolution, of which George Washington was one of the shining lights,
was a branch of the Illuminati. And was a secret society.

And, therefore, that’s why the Masons built the monument in
Alexandria to Washington. Not because he was the first President
of the United States.

[but] because he was the Mason and was the head the Illuminati in
this country and therefore was the, one of the founders of the Society
of the Cincinnati.

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Do you see what I mean?

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: And it becomes... You can’t believe it.

Now, these same conspirators are the Jacobins who made the French
Revolution. A woman named Nesta — N-E-S-T-A — Webster wrote
that book.

To refute it, my tutor, who’s a Rhodes Scholar, Crane Brinton — B-R-
l-N-T-O-N, wrote his doctoral dissertation called The Jacobins,’ in
which he refutes her. You see? Now, I think that, at the end of his life,
Brinton probably came to feel that he was wrong. That there was some
secret society involved in the Jacobins. And a student of his named
Elizabeth Eisenstein, who is a marvelous researcher (she is now
a professor at American University) under Brinton wrote a doctoral
dissertation on the founder of the Babeuf Conspiracy. The Babeuf
Conspiracy was a conspiracy of the extreme left which burst out in
France in 1 894 or so, led by a man named Babeuf, who was executed
for it. But the man behind it was a descendant of Michelangelo, named
Buonarrati. Because Buonarrati’s... Michelangelo’s family name was
Buonarrati. Look, if you can, at Eisenstein[‘s] book, which is published
by Harvard, her doctoral dissertation, which shows that Buonarrati
founded many secret societies, do you see?

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: One of them was the Babeuf people, who are now being
praised to the skies by all the neo-Marxists, like Marcusse and others,
you see, as the great heroes because they tried to change the...
because they tried to change the French Revolution from a middle
class, bourgeois, capitalist revolution — constitutional revolution —
into a communist revolution. Now Buonarroti is also the founder of the
Carbonari, of which Mazzini was the head in the 1840s, which united

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER • 404

Italy in the 1860s. Do you see? So, as, if you start with Buonarroti,
which as far as I can see is 1893 and 189-, eh, 1793, 1794, 1 think you
can trace a connection down through these various secret societies
which culminate in the... Mazzini Carbonari. For example, eh, I’ll tell
you one thing.

INTERVIEWER: O.K.

QUIGLEY: Italy was able to get free from Austria because, only
because France defeated Austria. Why did France do that? Nobody
can see why. It wasn’t in France’s interest. And yet France declared
war in 1 859 on Austria and at the battle[s] of Magenta and Solferino
defeated, and suddenly made a peace treaty with [Austria], without
freeing all of Italy. And the reason, we are told, that they suddenly
made the peace treaty without... is because the king... the emperor,
this is Napoleon III, was so sickened by the sight of the blood. Do
you see? Now, why did he do this? He did this because in 1868
[actually, 1858] a Carbonaro threw a bomb at him. This Carbonaro
was arrested, executed. But before he was executed, the Emperor
went to his cell, as I understand it, and the Carbonaro gave him the
secret sign of a fellow Carbonaro, because... the emperor of France
in the... who became, was elected president of France in 1848, seized
the throne in ‘51 [actually, he seized power in ‘51, the throne in ‘52]
and proclaimed a new Napoleonic Empire, and was overthrown by
the Germans in 71 , so he was the emperor for ... [in] 70, really... for
twenty years. Do you see?

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: But he had been a refugee from France, because he tried
to make a revolt in France, I think it was [in] 1829 [actually, 1836].

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

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QUIGLEY: And as a refugee, he joined the Carbonari secret society
[actually, he had joined many years earlier],

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Furthermore, he was a... he was a private policeman in
the Chartist march on Parliament in London in 1848, the year he in
which he was elected president of France. He’s a mysterious figure.
Do you see?

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: So, what I’m summing up is this: I do think there was
probably a continuous sequence of secret societies from Buonarroti
— [the] ‘Baboo, Babeuf conspiracy’, which is 1894, or ‘95 [actually,
1 794, or ‘95] — through the Carbonari unification of Italy, which would
be ‘61 , 1861. I cannot see anything since then. It may exist.

I haven’t really studied it.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: But I cannot see any connection between the Masons
and the Illuminati.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Founded in Bavaria in 1776 And I can’t see any connection
between them and Ba — , and... Buonarroti.

INTERVIEWER: Well, now.

QUIGLEY: Well, now that’s what these people are saying is all one.

INTERVIEWER: All right.

QUIGLEY: And some of them say it goes back to Noah building the
ark. [chuckles].

INTERVIEWER: Well. One thing that seems to me that... the
conspiracy theory of history is appealing because [it’s] mono-simple.

QUIGLEY: It’s so simple.

INTERVIEWER: It explains everything that’s unexplainable. And...
QUIGLEY: That’s going wrong.

INTERVIEWER: If you raise one point that doesn’t fit, they say ‘Ah,
see how clever the conspiracy is.’

QUIGLEY: Yes. Now.

INTERVIEWER: They... they.

QUIGLEY: Yes. I want to show you something. This is what they
start [with].

They start by showing you a one dollar bill.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: And they say ‘Why is there a trian — , pyramid, with an
eye over it?’ Do you see?

This is the symbol of the secret society. Now, if you ask people...
INTERVIEWER: Which secret society? Any secret society?

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QUIGLEY: The secret society, because according to them there’s
only one. You see?

According to them.

INTERVIEWER: The secret society that’s gone through generations.
Through...

QUIGLEY: Yes, yes. Now, if you ask the United States Government
why it is there.

They have great difficulty explaining. And they mostly come up with
‘It’s, eh, it’s the Masons, the Masonic symbol.’ But then when you
say ‘Why should the Mason symbol be on the American dollar bill?’.
And they have no explanation. So there is something. If you look at
this monument in Alexandria to Washington. It is the pyramid.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: You see... you know. Now the eye over it is the light. You
see. So... I could go further into this, but won’t have to, because this
symbol is at least... six thousand years old. And I can give you the
history of it [from] four thousand B.C. And it has nothing to do with
the Masons.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Now, maybe the Masons adopted it, you see. But it has
nothing...

But I will not go into that. That’s a totally different story.

INTERVIEWER: O.K. So this man from Nevada, this person from
Nevada called.

QUIGLEY: Called me up.

THE 74 INTERVIEW

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -408

And said they were having a hard time with the anti-semites using
this book [‘None Dare Call It Conspiracy’] as an argument against
Wall Street, against bankers, against Jews, against the Communists,
and everything else.

And they wanted me to debate, with this fellow who’d gotten in touch
with me, who was a professor at the university.

INTERVIEWER: Who believes this?

QUIGLEY: ” Eh. Oh, no, he doesn’t believe it. He was trying to get
rid of it.

The same way the fellow who called me from Brigham Young was
trying to stop this hysteria which was sweeping that mountain area,
apparently.

INTERVIEWER: Right.

QUIGLEY: And so they said ‘Would you debate... Gary Allen and
Larry Abraham?’

And... I said ‘Well, I’d rather not, frankly’. ‘But we need you help.’
And I said ‘Well, are they both going to be debating me?’ They said
‘No, there a Dr. So-and-So here, who will... debate with you.’ And he
is, I think, a medical doctor. I’m not certain of that. But he was Jewish.
And, what he was interested in was the anti-semitism part in this.

INTERVIEWER: He was going to debate on your team, on your side?

QUIGLEY: By my side. And they said ‘It’s going to be absolutely the
strictest thing.’

We’d be on the air for an hour. We’d be hooked up on telephone...
through the country. ‘I will be the coordinator,’ said this fellow, of
this. ‘And it will be rigorous. You will... must stay on the subject, or
I will stop you. There must be no personality attacks, or I will stop

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you. You can each talk for ten minutes [I think it is, or five minutes it
could have been]’.

And ‘then, when each of the four has talked (I think it was for ten
minutes), then each will have the right to have a five minute rebuttal’,
or something, you see.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Now, in the course of it, I soon discovered that Gary Allen
didn’t know up from down. But Larry A...

INTERVIEWER: Who...

QUIGLEY: No. But Larry Abraham was immensely well informed.
He knew all about corporations, finance and bankers, and who were
their partners. He know. He’s tremendous... I...

INTERVIEWER: How did you find out? From talking with people?

QUIGLEY: I found out from the debate.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, O.K. That’s what I was going to ask. You did
go to the debate?

QUIGLEY: Yeah. Gary Allen just repeated everything that’s in here
[Tragedy and Hope’]. When I put in my rebuttal, and said these
various things, he [Abraham] then started pulling in this information,
I mean, some of it I’ve never heard of.

Now, I don’t know everything. And the new book that’s out now,
published by the Buckley, I guess it it’s the Bill Buckley, press,
Arlington House. (I suppose it is Bill Buckley, I’m not sure of that)
called The Bolsheviks and Wall Street.’ Oh, we got to go to lunch.
The Bolsheviks and Wall Street’ has lots of things in there that I

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don’t, didn’t know.

INTERVIEWER: ... Huh.

QUIGLEY: Stop this. Now, I... I talked, told you that. Do you want to
put [that] down there?

INTERVIEWER: “Yeah.”

QUIGLEY: All right. I generally would think that any conspiracy theory
of history is nonsense.

For the simple reason that most of the conspiracies that we know
about seem to me to be the conspiracies of losers. Of people who
have been defeated on the platform; let’s say, the historical platform
of the public happenings.

The Ku Klux Klan was the, uh... Their arguments and their... point of
view had been destroyed, and defeated, in the Civil War. Well, because
they’re not prepared to accept that, they form a conspiracy, you see,
to fight against it in an underground way. And, those people who could
fight, up in the open, do so. Those who can’t, go underground. It
seems to me this is essentially what conspiracy [is]. The Palestinian
Liberation Army is a similar thing, you see. Now I think on the whole
they’re pretty well a group who... has not got really very much. And
so, they have to be terrorists. And...

INTERVIEWER: If I could play the Devil’s Advocate, I think, you, [with]
talking about the ‘international banking conspiracy’, they have not
lost out, they simply don’t want any attention. They don’t want to...

QUIGLEY: Oh... I... That’s...

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PROFESSOR

QUIGLEY'S

QUOTES

QUOTES FROM QUIGLEY'S WORK

THE EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATIONS (1961)

(SECOND EDITION 1979)

• This book is not a history. Rather it is an attempt to establish
analytical tools that will assist the understanding of history

— Preface to the First Edition, p. 23

• I came into history from a primary concern with mathematics and
science. This has been a tremendous help to me as a person and as
a historian, although it must be admitted it has served to make my
historical interpretations less conventional than may be acceptable
of many of my colleagues in the field.

— Preface to the First Edition, p. 27

•After years of work in both areas of study, I concluded that the social
sciences were different, in many important ways, from the natural
sciences, but that the same scientific methods were applicable in
both areas, and, indeed, that no very useful work could be done in
either area except by scientific methods.

— Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 33

• No scientist ever believes that he has the final answer or the ultimate
truth on anything.

— Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 34

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• It is not easy to tear any event out of the context of the universe in
which it occurred without detaching from it some factor that influenced
it.

— Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 35

• Even today few scientists and perhaps even fewer nonscientists
realize that science is a method and nothing else.

— Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 40

• Closely related to the erroneous idea that science is a body of
knowledge is the equally erroneous idea that scientific theories are
true.

— Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 40

• The range of human potentialities is also the range of human needs
because of man’s vital drive that impels him to seek to realize his
potentialities, this drive is even more mysterious than the potentialities
it seeks to realize.

— Chapter 2, Man and Culture, p. 55

• Each individual in a society is a nexus where innumerable
relationships of this character intersect.

— Chapter 2, Man and Culture, p. 59

• A fully integrated culture would be like the dinosaurs, which had
to perish because they were no longer able to adapt themselves to
changes in the external environment.

— Chapter 2, Man and Culture, p. 63

• The social sciences are usually concerned with groups of persons
rather than individual persons. The behavior of individuals, being
free, is unpredictable.

— Chapter 3, Groups, Societies, and Civilizations, p. 67

PROFESSOR QUIGLEY'S QUOTES

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER-416

• A society is a group whose members have more relationships with
one another then they do with outsiders.

— Chapter 3, Groups, Societies, and Civilizations, p. 71

•A civilization is complicated, in the first place, because it is dynamic;
that is, it is constantly changing in the passage of time, until it has
perished.

— Chapter 4, Historical Analysis, p. 85

• When we approach history, we are dealing with a conglomeration
of irrational continua. Those who deal with history by nonrational
processes are the ones who make history, the actors in it.

— Chapter 4, Historical Analysis, p. 99

• The backwardness of our religious and social developments is
undoubtedly holding back the development of the intellectual and
political levels.

— Chapter 4, Historical Analysis, p. 122

• Our political organization, based as it is on an eighteenth-century
separation of powers and on a nineteenth-century nationalist state,
is generally recognized to be semiobselete.

— Chapter 4, Historical Analysis, p. 123

• It is clear that every civilization undergoes a process of historical
change. We can see that a civilization comes into existence, passes
through a long experience, and eventually goes out of existence.

— Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 127

• Every civilization must be organized in such a way that it has
invention, capital accumulation, and investment.

— Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 137

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• These seven stages we shall name as follows:

1. Mixture

2. Gestation

3. Expansion

4. Age of Conflict

5. Universal Empire

6. Decay

7. Invasion

— Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 146

• The vested interests encourage the growth of imperialist wars and
irrationality because both serve to divert the discontent of the masses
away from their vested interests (the uninvested surplus).

— Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 152

• It is also in theory, conceivable that some universal empire some
day might cover the whole globe, leaving no external “barbarians”
to serve as invaders.

— Chapter 5, Historical Change in Civilizations, p. 163

• This priesthood became a closed group, able to control enormous
wealth and incomes, and concerned very largely with the study of
the solar and astronomical periodicities on which there influence was
originally based. With the surplus thus created, the priesthood was
able to command human labor in huge amounts and to direct this
labor from the simple tillage of the peasant peoples to the diversified
and specialized activities that constitute civilized living.

— Chapter 7, Mesopotamian Civilization, p. 213

• Capitalism might be defined, if we wish to be scientific, as a form
of economic organization motivated by the pursuit of profit within a
price structure.

— Chapter 8, Canaanite and Minooan Civilizations, p. 240

PROFESSOR QUIGLEY'S QUOTES

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• When profits are pursued by geographic interchange of goods, so that
commerce for profit becomes the central mechanism of the system,
we usually call it “commercial capitalism.” In such a system goods
are conveyed from ares where they are more common (and therefore
cheaper) to areas where they are less common (and therefore less
cheap). This process leads to regional specialization and to division
of labor, both in agricultural production and in handicrafts.

— Chapter 8, Canaanite and Minooan Civilizations, p. 241

• The process by which civilization, as an abstract entity distinct
from the societies in which it is embodied, dies or is reborn is a very
significant one.

— Chapter 8, Canaanite and Minooan Civilizations, p. 266

• The instrument of expansion of Classical civilization was a social
organization, slavery.

— Chapter 9, Classical Civilization, p. 270

• No slave system has ever been able to continue to function on
the slaves provided by its own biological reproduction because the
rate of human reproduction is too slow and the expense from infant
mortality and years of unproductive upkeep of the young make this
prohibitively expensive. This relationship is one of the basic causes of
the American Civil War, and was even more significant in destroying
ancient Rome.

— Chapter 9, Classical Civilization, p. 318

• Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for
historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a
part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable
variation from our pattern of historical change.

— Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 333-334

41 9 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

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• No culture has ever exceeded Western civilization in power and
extent. Our society now covers more than half of the globe, extending
in space from Poland to the east of Australia in the west. In the course
of this expansion, most of it during the last five centuries, the power
of Western civilization has been so great that it has destroyed, almost
without thinking of it, hundreds of other societies, including five or
six other civilizations.

— Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 334

• Western ideology believed that the world was good because it was
made by God in six days and that at the end of each day He looked
at His work and said that it was good.

— Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 337

• The fundamentalist position on biblical interpretation, with its
emphasis on the explicit, complete, final, and authoritarian nature
of Scripture, is a very late, minority view quite out of step with the
Western tradition.

— Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 342

• When these extremists argued for “either-or,”the Western tradition
answered “both!”

— Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 345

• One of the chief reasons for the widespread fear of the Huns rested
on their ability to travel very long distances in relatively short periods.
This ability may well have been based on their use of horseshoes.

— Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 349

• In fact, violence as a symbol of our growing irrationality has had
an increasing role in activity for its own sake, when no possible
justification could be made that the activity was seeking to resolve
a problem.

— Chapter 10, Western Civilization, p. 405

PROFESSOR QUIGLEY'S QUOTES

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• To know is not too demanding: it merely requires memory and time.
But to understand is quite a different matter: it requires intellectual
ability and training, a self conscious awareness of what one is doing,
experience in techniques of analysis and synthesis, and above all,
perspective.

— Conclusion, p. 415

• For years I have told my students that I been trying to train executives
rather than clerks. The distinction between the two is parallel to the
distinction previously made between understanding and knowledge.
It is a mighty low executive who cannot hire several people with
command of more knowledge than he has himself.

— Conclusion, p. 420

TRAGEDY AND HOPE: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN OUR
TIME (1966)

• The West believes that man and the universe are both complex
and that the apparently discordant parts of each can be put into a
reasonably workable arrangement with a little good will, patience,
and experimentation.

— p. 1227

• The problem of meaning today is the problem of how the diverse
and superficially self-contradictory experiences of men can be put
into a consistent picture that will provide contemporary man with a
convincing basis from which to live and to act.

— p. 1278

OSCAR IDEN LECTURE SERIES, LECTURE 3:
"THE STATE OF INDIVIDUALS" (1976)

• ...a state is not the same thing as a society, although the Greeks

421 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

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and Romans thought it was. A state is an organization of power on
a territorial basis.

• The link between a society, whether it be made up of communities
or individuals, and a state is this: Power rests on the ability to satisfy
human needs.

• ...the levels of culture, the aspects of society: military, political,
economic, social, emotional, religious, and intellectual. Those are your
basic human needs. ...they are arranged in evolutionary sequence.

• Men have social needs. They have a need for other people; they
have a need to love and be loved.

• The basis of social relationships is reciprocity: if you cooperate with
others, others will cooperate with you.

• Our society has so cluttered our lives with artifacts [man-made
things]... and organizational structures that [our] moment to moment
relationships with nature are almost impossible.

• ...human beings have religious needs. They have a need for a
feeling of certitude in their minds about things they cannot control
and they do not fully understand, and with humility, they admit they
do not understand...

When you destroy people’s religious expression, they will establish
secularized religions like Marxism.

• ...empires and civilizations do not collapse because of deficiencies
on the military or the political levels.

• Persons, personalities if you wish, can only be made in communities.

PROFESSOR QUIGLEY'S QUOTES

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• A community is made up of intimate relationships among diversified
types of individuals — a kinship group, a local group, a neighborhood,
a village, a large family.

• Without communities, no infant will be sufficiently socialized... and
that occurs in the first four or five years of life. ...The first two years
are important ...of vital importance. He has to be loved, above all he
has to be talked to.

• A state of individuals, such as we now have reached in Western
Civilization, will not create persons, and the atomized individuals
who make it up will be motivated by desires that do not necessarily
reflect needs. Instead of needing other people they need a shot of
heroin; instead of some kind of religious conviction, they have to be
with the winning team.

• ...we no longer have intellectually satisfying arrangements in
our educational system, in our arts, humanities or anything else;
instead we have slogans and ideologies. An ideology is a religious
or emotional expression; it is not an intellectual expression.

• ...when a society is reaching its end, in the last couple of centuries
you have... a misplacement of satisfactions. You find your emotional
satisfaction in making a lot of money... or in proving to the poor,
half-naked people in Southeast Asia that you can kill them in large
numbers.

• ...in the last thousand years. If we go back before [AD] 976... the
main core of people’s life and experience... was in the religious,
emotional and social levels. They had religious beliefs, they had social
and emotional relationships with people they saw every day. ...controls
and rewards were internalized. ...This is why they could get along
without a state in 976: all the significant controls were internalized.

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• ...Western Civilization began to expand in 976. ...The economic
expansion was achieved chiefly by specialization and exchange...
commercialization.

• ...today everything is commercialized — politics, religion, education,
ideology, belief, the armed services. ...Everything has its price.

• [Increasing] politicization means the [economic] expansion is slowing
up and you are no longer attempting to achieve increased output per
capita, or increased wealth, or increased satisfactions... but you are
doing so by mobilizing power. We have seen this going on for almost
a century... increased militarization.

• ...increasing remoteness of desires from needs ...increasing
confusion between means and ends. The ends are human needs...
Instead they want the means they have been brainwashed to accept...
Never was any society in human history as rich and as powerful as
Western Civilization and the United States, and it is not a happy
society.

• ...controls on behavior shift from the intermediate levels of human
experience (social, emotional and religious) to the lower (military and
political) or to the upper (ideological). They become the externalized
controls of a mature society: weapons, bureaucracies, material
rewards, or ideology.

• In its final stages the civilization becomes a dualism of almost
totalitarian imperial power and an amorphous mass culture of
atomized individuals.

• ... 1776 is a very significant year, and this is not just because the
American Revolution began. Watt’s patent of the steam engine... Adam
Smith’s Wealth of Nations... the failure of the French to reorganize

PROFESSOR QUIGLEY'S QUOTES

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER • 424

their political system occurred in 1776, and so forth. ...The destruction
of communities, the destruction of religion and the frustration of
emotions were greatly intensified by the Industrial Revolution:
railroads, factories, growth of cities, technological revolution in the
countryside and in the growing of food and so forth.

• .. .the nineteenth century Age of Expansion... brought on an
acceleration of the main focus of the activities of society... from the
areas of internal controls to the areas of external controls. ...the
increasing role of propaganda... helped create an impression of
stability.

• ...I offended some of you by saying you had been brainwashed.
This is not an insult; it’s a simple statement of fact. When any infant
is born and socialized in a society, even if he is to become a very
mature individual, he has been brainwashed. ...given a structure for
categorizing his experience and a system of values applied to the
structure of categories.

• ...in our society... this has now become a propagandist system in
which emphasis is put on the future... the ideology against which the
young people of the 1950’s and 1960’s rebelled. Future preference:
plan; study hard; save.

• Another aspect of the nineteenth century propaganda system is the
increasing emphasis upon material desires.

• ...we were brainwashed into believing... that the only important thing
was individualism. They called it freedom. There is no such thing as
freedom. There is something called liberty; it’s quite different. ...read
[Guido de] Ruggiero’s History of European Liberalism... Freedom is
freedom from restraints. We’re always under restraints.

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• The difference between a stable society and an unstable one is
that the restraints in an unstable one are external. In a stable society
government ultimately becomes unnecessary; the restraints on
people’s actions are internal, they’re self-disciplined...

• ...they have brainwashed us into believing in the last 150 years...
that quantitative change is superior to qualitative attributes. If we
can turn out more... it doesn’t matter if they’re half as good. ...We’re
quantifying everything, and that is why we’re trying to put everything
on computers. Governments will no longer have to make decisions;
computers will do it.

• ...they give us vicarious satisfactions for many of our frustrations.
...People need exercise; they do not need to watch other people
exercise... Another vicarious satisfaction is sexy magazines; this is
vicarious sex. To anyone rushing to buy one, I’d like to say, “The real
thing is better.”

• The brainwashing which has been going on for 1 50 years has also
resulted in the replacement of intellectual activities and religion by
ideologies and science. ...I have nothing against Marx, except that
his theories do not explain what happened.

• The very idea that there is some kind of conflict between science and
religion is completely mistaken. Science is a method for investigating
experience... Religion is the fundamental, necessary internalization
of our system of more permanent values.

• Another thing that they have tried to get us to believe in the last
150 years... is that the nation as the repository of sovereignty can
be both a state and a community. ...Why did the English, the French,
the Castilians, the Hohenzollerns, and others become the repository
of sovereignty as nations... They did so because... weapons made it

PROFESSOR QUIGLEY'S QUOTES

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -426

possible to compel obedience over areas which were approximately
the size of these national groups... nationalism is an episode in history,
and it fit a certain power structure and a certain configuration in human
life in our civilization. Now... They all want autonomy. ...The nation
or the state, as we now have it as the structure of power, cannot be
a community.

• We have now done what the Romans did when they started to
commit suicide. We have shifted from an army of citizens to an army
of mercenaries...

• The appearance of stability from 1 840 to about 1 900 was superficial,
temporary and destructive in the long run... because communities
and societies must rest upon cooperation and not upon competition.
Anyone who says that society can be run on the basis of everyone’s
trying to maximize his own greed is talking total nonsense. And to
teach it in schools, and to go on television and call it the American
way of life still doesn’t make it true. Competition and envy cannot
become the basis of any society or any community.

• The economic and technological achievements of industrialization
in this period were fundamentally mistaken. ...based upon plundering
the natural capital of the globe that was created over millions of years:
the plundering of the soils and their fertility; the plundering of human
communities whether they were our own or someone else’s.

• The fundamental, all-pervasive cause of world instability is the
destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human
relationships and the resulting neuroses and psychoses. The
technological acceleration of transportation, communication and
weapons systems is now creating power areas wider than existing
political structures.

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• ...another cause of today’s instability is that we now have a society
in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally dominated
by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state
structure: control of credit and banking, and the corporation. These
are free of political controls and social responsibility and have
largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American
society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor,
entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists
once told us were the chief elements of production. The only element
of production they are concerned with is the one they can control:
capital.

• The final result will be that the American people will ultimately
prefer communities. They will cop out or opt out of the system. Today
everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed people who
are not personalities are trained to fit into this bureaucratic structure
and say it is a great life — although I would assume that many on their
death beds must feel otherwise. The process of copping out will take
a long time, but notice: we are already copping out of military service
on a wholesale basis; we are already copping out of voting on a large
scale basis. ...People are also copping out by refusing to pay any
attention to newspapers or to what’s going on in the world, and by
increasing emphasis on the growth of localism, what is happening
in their own neighborhoods.

• When Rome fell, the Christian answer was, “Create our own
communities.”

Source: Wikiquote

PROFESSOR QUIGLEY'S QUOTES

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PHOTO

GALLERY

BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL, 1929

HARVARD, 1933

WILLIAM CARROLL QUIGLEY
Born on November 9, 1910 at Boston,
Massachusetts. Prepared at Boston Latin
School. Home address: 10 Weld Avenue,
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. In college four
years as undergraduate. Ramblers Football
Squad, 1931; Charles Downer Scholarship,
1930-1931; Burr Scholarship. 1932-1933.
Field of Concentration: History

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -432

1943

CAHHOL (JtliCrl l- v r pji D.

Priftui/i v,r iiiiitrt

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SFS YEARBOOK, 1948

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CA ft ROLL QUEGLEY, PH.D.

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1951

CARROLL QUIGLEY, M.A., PH.D.

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1961

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CARROLL QUIGLEY & WIFE LILLIAN,

HISTORY, 1962

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER • 444

1963

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"I, painting from myself and to myself. Know what
I do, am unmoved by men's blame, or their praises
either. Somebody remarks Morello's outline there is
wrongly traced, his hue mistaken; what of that? or
else, rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain
care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his
grasp, or what's a heaven for?"

— Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning

“I’ve devoted my life to Saving Western Civilization.”
Hmmph.

"It's easy to make a million dollars”

Hmmmmph.

"There's not a man on God's green earth”

Ah-so...

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■,v

>/>, ■'T;

1967

CARROLL QUIGLEY

Professor of History

"The two processes — that of predicting the
future and that of reconstructing the past — are
essentially similar: both are processes of inference
and generalization."

— F. W. Maitland, Collected Papers , IV, 285

DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -454

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Carroll Quigley, History
Dorothy M. Brown, History

465 • LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

CARROLL QUIGLEY

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DISCOVERY PUBLISHER -468

CARROLL QUIGLEY

LIFE, LECTURES & COLLECTED WRITINGS

I ncreasing remoteness of desires from needs; increasing
confusion between means and ends. The ends are human
needs. Instead we want the means we have been brainwashed
to accept. Never was any society in human history as rich
and as powerful as Western Civilization and the United
States, and it is not a happy society.

The cause of today’s instability is that we now have a society
in America, Europe and much of the world which is totally
dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not
included in the state structure: control of credit and banking, and
the corporation. These are free of political controls and social
responsibility and have largely monopolized power in Western
Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going
forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial-managerial skills,
and everything else the economists once told us were the chief
elements of production. The only element of production they are
concerned with is the one they can control: capital.

The final result will be that the American people will ultimately
prefer communities. They will cop out or opt out of the system.
Today everything is a bureaucratic structure, and brainwashed
people who are not personalities are trained to fit into this
bureaucratic structure and say it is a great life — although I would
assume that many on their death beds must feel otherwise. The
process of copping out will take a long time, but notice: we are
already copping out of military service on a wholesale basis; we are
already copping out of voting on a large scale basis. People are also
copping out by refusing to pay any attention to newspapers or to
what’s going on in the world, and by increasing emphasis on the
growth of localism, what is happening in their own neighborhoods.

When Rome fell, the Christian answer was: “Create our own
communities.”

ISBN T7A-

781516 922741

90000

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